


Flesh, circuit and bone

by crimson_calamity



Series: Memories in binary [2]
Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Cyberpunk, Hacking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-07-13 04:59:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16010786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimson_calamity/pseuds/crimson_calamity
Summary: Jaebum keeps telling himself he's not going to get into difficult business anymore, but every single time he runs headlong into it anyway even after getting burned worse than he thought possible. Yet here he is, doing it all over again, with the very person who burned him last time. What could possibly go wrong?





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> it's time for the chaptered bit!! hope u enjoy it and if u haven't read the first part of the series go do that!!
> 
> this au is based heavily on the book neuromancer by william gibson and also the tabletop rpg shadowrun, tho this fic is purely scifi/cyberpunk with none of the fantasy that shadowrun includes; something to note is that I use some shadowrun slang and also megacorporations in this fic simply bc its cool and easier than coming up with a bunch of company names so if u have any questions let me know!!
> 
> also!! the title of this fic and the series is taken from the lyrics to several scandroid songs, with both being said in neo-tokyo I think but they're also used elsewhere, so go check out scandroid!! it's v good synthwave/retrowave and i'll be linking to several songs in several chapters bc its really perfect for this fic and gives super good atmosphere!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter's song is [scandroid - destination unknown](https://youtu.be/AZJUZfjB6YM) listen if u want some atmosphere and also a cool bop

**23:00 @ the Blue Room. You have a meeting.**

Jaebum stares at the message in front of his eyes, black text in a pink box. With a shake of his head, he swipes it aside, striding deeper into the maze, walls a pulsing neon blue and towering above him with navy cyberspace visible over the top of them. He trails his fingers against the left-hand wall, leaving behind lines of shimmering silver, the colour bleeding into circles around his fingertips like ink in water when he pauses at the next junction.

**Jaebum I know you read that acknowledge it.**

Rolling his eyes, he bats it aside and peers down the corridors. They’re both corrupted, blue shot through with black but the right is considerably worse. In fact, Jaebum wouldn’t notice the fractures along the very bottom of the walls to the left, the filigree of damage along the floor tiles if he wasn’t looking for this exact thing - few people would in fact. He crosses the junction, presses his flickering hand to the wall and turns right, trailing his fingers along next to him again.

**Stop ignoring me.**

“I’m busy.” He replies aloud, irritably shoving the message aside again. The cracks worsen down the hallway, walls in pieces and the floor breaking apart to hover in the inky space; he kneels down at the edge of the shattered part, pressing both hands to it to leave a larger patch of silver, before straightening up and taking a couple of steps back. He takes those steps again running and jumps, leaping from tile to tile and pushing off the fractured walls where necessary. 

The corridor reforms somewhat further down, pieces glued back together by a sickly looking greenish mortar; Jaebum rolls his eyes and lands on the edge, braced for the inevitable and sure enough, it cracks, the chunk of neon floor he’s stood on coming loose and drifting back towards the debris field. The green gunk continues down the corridor, thickening and overwhelming the neon tiles after a few metres, climbing and crawling up over the walls. Jaebum scoffs. Amateurs.

**What is this the job for Shiawase? You can do that in your sleep.**

“Can you not wait?” Jaebum grunts, hopping onto and walking down the corridor and grimacing as he steps onto the green stuff. It’s sticky, clinging to his shoes and it gets deeper, feet sinking in almost to his ankles. It’s coming from the dead end, from what looks like a large tube overflowing with the stuff. 

**The meeting’s in two hours you need to listen now.**

He stops when the gunk - pathetic attempts to patch up what's broken in the code - starts reaching his shins. It comes off in thick globs when he reaches down to touch it; he shakes his hand out with a grimace. Not particularly wanting to wade through the stuff, he reaches behind himself, pulling the pistol from his belt and levelling it carefully at the tube. 

The first shot sinks into the gloop but a few seconds later a patch of it maybe a metre square flickers and vanishes, revealing the tube even as more starts oozing from the lip of it. Jaebum doesn’t wait for it to drip down, firing off three more shots into the tube itself; it chips, then cracks, then shatters, bursting open. The pieces hover in their air for a moment before they too flicker and disappear, the gunk following, all of it vanishing from the vase outwards. Of course, this means that the floor is no longer being held together; a crack appears between Jaebum’s feet and he steps to the left, crouching down as the walls and floor shatter apart again.

**Jaebum come on multitask.**

Rolling his eyes for what feels like the umpteenth time, Jaebum waits until the neon pieces fall still before standing up. The dead end is mostly intact, an alcove hovering in the matrix with a cracked and dented panel set into it, covered in blinking red and yellow lights and looking a little worse for wear. Stowing the pistol back in his belt, Jaebum steps from platform to platform, alighting on the alcove and approaching the panel.

**Seriously stop ignoring me asshole.**

“I’ll be a few minutes, relax.” Jaebum grumbles reluctantly. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out the fixed code, a little black box with a port on one side then examines the panel until he finds the connector, hidden behind a cracked screen that slides aside when he taps it. The floor rumbles when he plugs it in and he glances back over his shoulder to see the corridor reforming itself, fragments slotting together and sealing like they were never broken. Well, almost at least. A webbing of cracks remains where the wall meets the floor, a tiny almost imperceptible flaw lost in the glow of the neon. Jaebum smiles and disconnects the box.

Fingers trailing along the wall again, he returns to the junction, the silver lines linking up now the wall is intact. He crouches down next to the cracks in the left-hand path, examining them critically; they’re a little big to leave. Standing up, he follows them to their source - not the entire way down the corridor but to a fistsized hole in the wall about eye height, inky matrix visible through it. He narrows his eyes at it; there are little strings of neon hanging down from the edges, probably loose connections, little holes in the code. Easy enough to fix, but he’ll need to rewrite this section. He draws a silver box around the hole, downloads the contents then pulls open a message window.

“I’ll need access once more, in a few days’ time.” He says aloud, watching the text appear on the screen, already addressed to his contact; he pushes it away from himself and it sends with a soft ping.

**You done there hotshot.**

Jaebum casts his eyes to the cyberspace above him in despair and heads back to the junction, turning down the corridor he arrived through and to the doorway hovering in the air; he steps through the glow and, once his stomach’s stopped falling out from under him and he’s no longer horrendously dizzy, opens his eyes again to a stuffy apartment and a light blinking insistently on his deck. Groaning internally, he sits up.

“Answer that.” He rasps, barely audible but the deck picks it up anyway and there’s a click.

“Finally,” Youngjae groans, “now listen to me asshole, this is important.” Jaebum coughs and massages his throat, dry and scratchy. “The meeting is at eleven, at the Blue Room and no, you don’t have a choice, I’ve already said you’re going.” Of course he has. Jaebum reaches behind his head and yanks the jack from its port behind his left ear; it tingles a bit, teeth jarring and tongue going slightly numb for a moment.

“Yoo Youngjae, how many times have I told you not to fucking do that?” He grumbles through gritted teeth, voice marginally less rough. Youngjae just snorts.

“Whatever, this one’s asking for you by name and she’s offering stupid money for what looks like an easy job, you’d have gone to the meeting anyway.” Stretching his arms over his head, Jaebum stands up and pads through to his tiny kitchen, a little panel flipping down from the wall with a speaker and a microphone. 

“Whatever-” Youngjae snorts at his muttered acquiescence- “it’s not an easy job then, is it?” He continues dryly. Youngjae makes a reluctantly affirmative noise.

“Worth talking to her though.” He mutters. Jaebum shrugs and grabs an instant noodle packet and a bowl from a cupboard. 

“Fine. But only if you stop setting things up without asking me.” Jaebum flicks the kettle on and settles against the counter.

“Fine,” Youngjae parrots, “how’s the cracking going?” Jaebum drums his fingers on the dark grey plastic.

“Almost done, though I’m having to rewrite half of it. I don’t know who’s coding for them but they need to fire them.” Youngjae laughs.

“Or not, since this way they pay you good money to ‘fix’ it.” Jaebum can practically hear the air quotes around that and smiles to his empty apartment. “Anyone after a sneak peek yet?” He asks, unconvincingly innocent. 

“Haven't posted it anywhere yet.” The kettle starts rumbling and clicks once it’s boiled. He pours water over the noodles and settles back to wait for a couple of minutes. 

“Get on that-” a brief pause, then Youngjae groans- “shit, I have to go. Don’t miss the meeting.” And he hangs up. A few seconds later there’s a beep and a projector on the speaker panel shows a message with an address and a name: Ms Kim. Jaebum’s chin droops and he sighs, eyes slipping shut. Great. A megacorp. Hopefully this isn’t about some code he doctored else he’s definitely not coming out of this alive. 

 

The Blue Room turns out to be a bar and not a very pleasant one at that. It's packed and dark and smells like smoke, various cigarettes and drugs blending together with perfumes and body odour into something truly noxious. Jaebum adjusts his mask and shoves his way to the bar, propping up against it and waiting for a bartender. A woman pushes in next to him, pink hair pinned up with some strands escaping to stick to her sweaty forehead; she smiles at him, bats her eyelashes and folds her arms to emphasise her cleavage. Jaebum looks away. 

“What?” The bartender barks at him when he finally flags one down. He smiles tightly, sure it isn't convincing.

“I have a meeting with Ms Kim.” He replies, dropping a credit chip onto the bar, a customary gesture. The bartender’s cyberware eyes narrow and he points to a door, guarded by a couple of very large men. Jaebum sighs and nods, squeezing his way out of the bar crush and approaching the men. They look him up and down when he repeats what he said, the slightly smaller one nodding and opening the door for him.

It's much cooler past it, just a short and narrow corridor with a set of stairs at the end. Trudging his way up, Jaebum runs a hand through his hair - it's getting long, he needs a haircut - and opens the door at the top to reveal a room with a circular table in the centre, one person currently sat at it, a woman, appearing maybe forty and blandly attractive. 

“Def I assume?” She asks, a vague smile on her face. Jaebum shrugs.

“That’s me.” He grunts; she inclines her head and gestures at a chair, her arm flickering slightly. A projection then. 

“Please sit, we have one more person for which to wait.” He does so, crossing his arms and rocking back on the back legs of the metal chair. She makes no effort to speak so neither does he, staring at the opposite wall and listening to the quiet whir of the projector hidden near the floor, too quiet for unaugmented ears to hear.

Fifteen minutes pass before there's a knock on the door. The woman calls an invitation and it swings open.

“Apologies for being late, I was caught in-" The legs of Jaebum's chair clatter to the ground, loud and sudden; Jinyoung freezes and they stare at each other in disbelief for thirty-seven seconds before the woman speaks up.

“We must also apologise for the somewhat vague nature of the invitation extended to you Mr Def, though I thank you for coming on such short notice.” Jaebum ignores her. So does Jinyoung, whose usually infallible professional exterior has cracked somewhat. He looks angry. He can join the club.

“Ms Kim, you failed to mention to me that you were looking to hire  _ him _ .” Jaebum bristles, ignoring the hurt and focussing on the irritation at being talked about like he's not in the room. Kim smiles blandly.

“This is exactly why we failed to mention it. Sit down, Mr Park.” She says sharply. Jinyoung takes a breath and replaces his neutral mask before doing as he's told. Folding his arms, Jaebum leans back in his seat again, tempted to put his feet up on the table to piss Jinyoung off. “Now, if we can get to business-” Kim turns to Jaebum, eyes calculating under their veneer of politeness; Jaebum feels slimy just sitting next to her- “we would like to offer a job to you, one we feel you are uniquely qualified for.” Wonderful. 

“Who's we?” He asks flatly but he knows who it is. She smiles and Jinyoung scoffs.

“Renraku Computer Systems, of course.” She says. Of course. Jaebum's head tips back and he glares at the ceiling, pulling off his mask to speak clearer.

“What do you want?” There's a laugh from Jinyoung, fake and annoying. Patronising asshole. Jaebum ignores the ache in his chest. 

“We have need of a decker of your calibre to aid Mr Park in a delicate matter, one that is increasingly important and requires prompt attention.” Corporate speak is so goddamn annoying.

“So what, a real time theft right? I'm hacking, he's stealing?” Kim winces and Jinyoung shakes his head and casts his eyes to the ceiling. “It's cute that you don't want to call it that but that's what it is. Welcome to the business.” Kim's smile is now looking a little forced.

“It's rather crude, but not dissimilar to what we're asking. Mr Park will be infiltrating a facility and you will be required to run ahead in cyberspace and let him in.” So exactly what Jaebum just said. Great. 

“Why would you think I would work with him? Or that he would work with me?” He adds when Jinyoung stiffens and starts to snap back. Kim's starting to look slightly pained holding that smile in place.

“Because we can pay you very well.” She produces a piece of paper and pushes it towards Jaebum who sets his chair back on four legs and bends towards it. It flickers on the wooden table but he can read off the price they're offering. It's a lot. Like a year's worth of rent, food and deck upgrades a lot. He licks his lips.

“Even if I were to agree-" She cuts him off and Jinyoung glares over to the side.

“Mr Park has already agreed.” She says coolly.

“Before I knew it was you, may I add.” He snaps. Okay then.

“Fine. I'll do it. Send me the contract.” He says icily, staring at Jinyoung across the table; he flinches almost imperceptibly but keeps his expression just vaguely annoyed. Kim breathes out a sigh and there's a ding in Jaebum's ear, a light on the cuff on his right wrist blinking.

“Look it over, call me with your final decision by evening tomorrow.” Kim stands up and her image flickers before winking out entirely, leaving Jaebum alone with Jinyoung who steadfastly refuses to look at him. Fantastic. Neither of them are willing to be the first to leave either, both just sitting rigid in their chairs.

“Still cleaning for Renraku then?” Jaebum asks snarkily when the stony silence becomes unbearable; he's the one who left to go play assassin for a megacorp. Jinyoung’s eye twitches but he’s otherwise unaffected, plastering an amiable smile onto his face.

“Something like that. Still writing backdoors into code for rent money?” Yes, and whose fucking fault is that? Big jobs don’t just fall out of the sky, especially ones that can be done by a solo decker. “Is there something you needed to know? Or are we done here?” Jaebum's hackles rise at his dismissiveness.

“One thing actually-" Jinyoung actually fucking rolls his eyes like a goddamn teenager and Jaebum sees red- “just wondering how much those weapon plans have made you. I just feel like I should get a cut of that or something considering I have  _ such  _ trouble with money and you  _ stole  _ them from me.” They've had this argument once before and it's only partially about Jinyoung stealing from him. A big part, but only a part. Jinyoung forces out a long breath and looks at him; he smiles back sweetly. 

“Why don't you ask your boyfriend? Or did you cheat on him too?” This again- Jaebum grips the edge of the table hard enough to hurt, knuckles white.

“I swear to fucking god, I never fucking cheated on you!” He snaps, sick at just the thought. “You left me, Jinyoung, you told me we weren't together anymore and I had a brief relationship with someone else almost a year after you said that to me! On what fucking planet is that cheating?!” Jaebum vaguely wonders if this room is soundproof. The bar is probably loud enough that no one can hear him shouting. 

“You could have fucking trusted me, I told you I would come back-!” Jinyoung yells back, slamming a hand onto the table. Jaebum barks a mirthless laugh, chest hurting even worse now.

“No, you didn't, you left me in your fucking apartment with a  _ note  _ saying you were breaking up with me and leaving the country having stolen my data!” Jinyoung stands up, fists balled at his sides.

“You think I enjoyed it? You think it was fun, isolating myself and leaving having broken your-" he stops, composes himself somewhat- “I sent you messages, I told you I-” Jaebum laughs, almost hysterical and stands up too.

“Coded messages from my fucking ex-boyfriend that came through months after he broke up with me, oh what a fun thing to decipher on a Sunday afternoon- forgive me if that wasn't high on my priority list.” He spits. Jinyoung looks almost shocked, trying hard to hide the hurt there too and Jaebum really wishes he could take vicious satisfaction from that but he can't, it just hurts him too. Ache spreading from his chest to his throat, Jaebum looks down, staring at his perfectly ironed shirt rather than his face. “Jinyoung you  _ left _ me. You told me you didn't want me anymore and you  _ stole _ from me and you expected me to wait and see if you maybe deigned to come back?” He laughs again, quiet and miserable but he refuses to let his head drop any further, lifting his gaze back up to Jinyoung's and holding it defiantly. “Well stupid as it was, I did, for months. But then I gave up because I saw you,  _ everyone _ saw you climb to the top of Renraku on the back of  _ my  _ work,  _ my  _ effort,  _ my  _ fucking sleepless nights and I heard nothing from you, radio silence until you rock up out of nowhere another six months later, so you can take your entitled fucking attitude and shove it up your ass because I don't fucking care anymore.” He sucks in a deep breath when he's done, hands trembling at his sides; he's been waiting a long time to say that. He shoves them in his pockets and looks away.

“If you don't care, why are you crying?” Jinyoung asks softly. Horrified, Jaebum's shoulders go rigid and he blinks quickly, now feeling the wetness on his face and dislodging a couple more tears from his eyelashes.

“Fuck you.” He rasps, pulling his mask up and stalking out the door. He's not sure if he's glad or hurt that Jinyoung doesn't try to stop him.

 

“You agreed?!” Mark's pretzel falls out of his mouth and disappears from the projection. Jaebum rubs his eyes.

“No. Well. Yes, but I haven't signed anything yet.” Muttering to himself, Mark disappears briefly and has the pretzel in his mouth again when he returns. He crunches it right in the microphone despite knowing full well Jaebum's got cyberware eardrums. Asshole. 

“You're an idiot. I hope you know that.” Mark says around his pretzel. Jaebum glowers at him then goes back to his coding. “I see you do know that.” Mark heaves a sigh and rustles in his packet again. Tapping at the screen, Jaebum adjusts a couple of lines, writing in an almost unnoticeable flaw to allow third party access to the system should they have a certain passcode. He also sets the passcode.

“I didn't call you for a lecture, I called for advice.” Jaebum mutters. Mark snorts and crunches more pretzels. 

“Why? We both know you're going to take the job, you've always been an idiot for Jinyoung. Even after he fucking stole from you.” What a vote of confidence. Jaebum's shoulders slump a little and he sighs; it's not like he's wrong though. “Just be careful. Jinyoung aside, Renraku is really bad news. They say the matrix crash was their fault.”  _ They  _ say a lot of things, but Jaebum's inclined to believe this one. The matrix crash was suspicious and Renraku did profit massively by bringing out their new generation jacks and connectors, as well as revamping a considerable portion of the matrix mainframe itself. But then that was fifteen years ago, so management has likely been purged several times since then, plus every megacorp managed to benefit somehow from the matrix crash.

“I've infiltrated megas like this before, I know how to handle them.” Usually Jinyoung was on his side, but he'll manage with him as an antagonist this time. They'll both technically be working for the same end after all. 

“Alright. Don't get killed.” Jaebum snorts.

“I'll do my best.” Mark hums and the feed cuts. Eyes aching, Jaebum refocuses on the code. 

It takes another hour but he gets it done; now all he has to do is plug it into the hole, get paid by Shiawase and check the message boards for anyone looking for a way into their encrypted data. Unfortunately it now means he has no excuse to avoid reading the contract. He taps his cuff and flicks upwards; it appears on the screen in front of him, pages and pages of corporate speak explaining that they take no responsibility for his actions and will throw him under the bus should he get caught. All standard.

“Keyword payment.” He says aloud. The text scrolls downwards quickly, stopping with a bounce on the payment and expenses section. It is a lot of money. But is it worth dealing with Jinyoung for: “Keyword action plan.” It freezes for a second, then scrolls up again to the plan of infiltration. Goal is to- huh. “Delete records and retrieve plans. Plans of what?” The text scrolls again, only a short way this time. “Deck designs. Why do they want deck designs?” The text trembles to say there's no answer. Jaebum purses his lips. “Retrieve from who?” More scrolling. Deck blueprints currently in the hands of Mitsuhama Computer Technologies. Well that's just wonderful.

“Find blueprint contents.” He barks. The text shakes. What are they asking him to help steal? “Plan for theft?” The text shakes more violently and Jaebum rolls his eyes. “Plan for retrieval.” It scrolls again. Blueprints are held in the Mitsuhama sovereign building in Neo-Tokyo which is also being used to host a gala in three weeks' time; plan is to have Jinyoung infiltrate in person with Jaebum running support from cyberspace. Great. Short time span and difficult execution in a different country. Just wonderful. 

It's such a lot of money though; Jaebum runs his hands through his hair and grips it, curling into a ball with his forehead on his knees. Is it enough money? To justify all of it? Working with Renraku, breaking into Mitsuhama, stealing an apparently highly valuable deck blueprint? Working with Jinyoung again?

Hugging his knees, Jaebum rests his chin on them and stares blankly at the screen on his table. Is it worth working with Jinyoung again? There's a lot of dirty laundry there that's going to get aired all over again. It was bad enough Jinyoung turning up out of the blue a month ago to scream at him for trying to move on but now working together, having to trust each other even for a few weeks in a professional environment, having to relive all the good times before they broke up through the painful lens of doing the same thing they've always done but as reluctant colleagues, not even friends, let alone lovers. It'll hurt. Probably a lot.

It is a hell of a lot of money though.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> your song for this chapter is [scandroid - oblivia](https://youtu.be/Xxp7XZ3oT04) go listen to it!! (Also scene in italics at the start is in the past <3)

_ Jaebum swallows down his nausea as he jacks out - he’s still getting used to this new deck, it’s not sitting quite right just yet - and rubs his eyes when he’s regained full use of his arms. Triumphantly, he beams at Jinyoung, who’s bending over his deck and removing the cloudless storage unit from its port on the side. He turns it over in his hands delicately, like it’s made of glass and fragile rather than industrial grade and all but indestructible. _

_ “Everything went smoothly?” He asks without looking up. Jaebum wobbles to his feet and over to him, taking his wrist. His head snaps up, an odd light in his eyes for a second before it vanishes; Jaebum doesn’t think too much about it - he’s been busy with jobs too lately, he’s probably just tired - and grins broadly. _

_ “Everything went great. Shredded the files behind me, they shouldn’t have wrecked my old deck.” He says smugly; Jinyoung seems to relax minutely but smiles back, twisting his wrist out of Jaebum’s grip to grab the back of his neck and kiss him. It feels kind of weird, desperate even but Jaebum just laughs into it and prods his stomach, twisting away from him. “Don’t, I feel gross, I need a shower.” Sitting around for several hours tends to do that. Jinyoung just kisses him again, but leans away with a squawk when Jaebum pokes the sensitive bits of his sides.  _

_ “Fine, go,” he grumbles, swatting at his hands when he goes to do it again, “we can go out for dinner afterwards.” He shoves Jaebum towards the bathroom. With a snort, Jaebum heads that way, glancing back over his shoulder to see Jinyoung once again examining the storage unit, head bowed and his fringe obscuring his eyes. _

_ When he emerges from the bathroom again, he feels much more like a human being again. Jacking in for several hours like that often leaves him feeling a bit weird and clumsy, but showering is always grounding. Shoving his damp hair out of his face, Jaebum strolls back into the living room.  _

_ “Where are you wanting to go for-” He stops and looks around. Jinyoung’s not in the living room. “Jinyoung?” He calls, expecting him to shout back from the kitchen or bedroom or something, but there’s only silence. Taking a few steps further in, he tries again, but still nothing. “What- Jinyoung where-” His voice gives out, mouth hanging open when he looks at what’s on the couch; a full, zipped-up duffel bag and the case he brought his deck in, packed up and sealed. There’s a piece of paper on top of it, folded up and tucked under the handle. Stomach twisting hard, Jaebum rounds the sofa and yanks it free, unfolding it with shaking fingers. _

Jaebum, your things are in these bags. I won’t be returning to this apartment or Seoul for the foreseeable future, so you need to remove them when you leave if you want to keep them. I also won’t be returning to you; this isn’t what I want anymore. You aren’t what I want anymore. Though I am grateful for the missile plans. 

Jinyoung

_ Jaebum lets out a sharp breath and can’t seem to pull in another, the paper trembling in his hands. He’s frozen for thirty seconds, desperately trying to figure out what kind of fucking joke Jinyoung’s playing on him, then spins on his heel and stalks into the bedroom to rip open the wardrobe. _

_ “Wh-” It’s empty. Cleared of everything. As is the chest of drawers and the bedside tables. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He barely recognises his own voice, thin and hoarse and wavering. This can’t be happening. Jinyoung wouldn’t- he wouldn’t do this, he wouldn’t. But all of the evidence to the contrary is right there in front of him.  _

_ How long was he waiting, not wanting to be here, just so he could take those fucking plans with him? How much of this, of them, was a lie?  _

_ Jaebum punches the wall, hard enough to crack the weak plaster and break one of his knuckles. It hurts, he thinks; he can’t really feel it, can’t really feel anything, just numb with disbelief. It’ll hurt later though. A lot of things will.  _

_ Suddenly unable to bear being in here, he stumbles out of the bedroom, grabbing the duffel bag and deck case and stalking out of the door and for the elevator. He only realises he’s already in tears when the doors slide open and his face gets reflected back at him in the mirrors lining its interior.  _

 

“Hello again.” Kim smiles blandly. Jaebum nods. Jinyoung sulks. Not that he'd admit to it, but he's definitely sulking and it cuts rather an amusing image to see him trying not to pout like a child while so well put-together in his expensive suit and perfect coiff. Jaebum takes a little petty satisfaction in it even if he’s once again very aware of how badly he himself needs a haircut. “Everything in order?” She asks this but doesn't sound like she really wants an answer other than yes. That's a shame for her.

“I have some questions before I agree.” He says briskly, tapping the side of his glasses to bring up his list under the pretence of pushing them higher up his nose. Kim looks a little strained and Jinyoung scoffs, but Jaebum ignores them. “Why does Renraku want these deck plans?” He's not expecting much of an answer to this one and sure enough he doesn't get one.

“I'm afraid I can't tell you that because I don't know; it's classified, above my pay grade.” Of course; Jaebum crosses his arms. He doesn’t for a second believe that she doesn’t know, but she definitely isn’t going to tell him.

“What sort of security will there be around these blueprints?” It’s Mitsuhama after all and their aggression when it comes to defence is very well known. Sure enough, Kim's smile gets a little strained. 

“We aren't sure of specifics, not deeper into their systems at least-" so they've been scouting the outskirts, that's something Jaebum supposes- “but the edges involve grey and white intrusion countermeasures-" oh just call it ICE, fucking corps- “and we suspect that security tightens further in.” Great.

“So black ICE then, is what you're saying.” Jaebum says dryly; it isn’t business with a megacorp without a severe risk of injury or death from killer ICE. She just smiles wanly and Jinyoung rolls his eyes. “Whose programs? Commercial or bespoke?” Kim shakes her head.

“I'm afraid I don't know, if our techs are aware they didn't tell me.” She answers briskly. Jaebum sighs and rubs his temple. 

“Find out-” Kim's left eyebrow twitches minutely- “I'm not blundering into a system protected by black ICE without knowing how it works. You're Renraku  _ Computer Systems _ , you should know that's suicide.” Honestly, they  _ make _ ICE for fuck’s sake. Maybe they just don't want to admit they're the ones who sold the ICE to Mitsuhama. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be a decker?” Jinyoung says icily, “surely you can find out yours-” Jaebum mutes his feed, making sure Jinyoung knows he’s been muted; he puffs up, indignation passing across his face.

“I can. But I don’t have the resources of a megacorp, nor the inclination to risk my deck or my life finding out at the price you’re offering.” He says coldly, looking back to Kim who looks like she’s seriously reconsidering her career choices. 

“No, that is a reasonable request, I’ll talk to our deckers and have them send you a report.” She sounds tired. “Do you have more questions? And please unmute Mr Park.” Jaebum sighs and does as she asked. Jinyoung doesn’t immediately start yelling at him - he’s struggled to put a professional face on but it really is a struggle from what he can see - but does smile in such a way that Jaebum knows he actually wants to throw him out a window. 

“I have a couple more.” He answers, abruptly tired as well. So he doesn’t like seeing Jinyoung look at him like this, he’s allowed to be upset and it’s tiring to have to pretend to be unaffected. Kim gestures for him to continue. “What’s this gala thing?” It’s Jinyoung that answers, clearly trying to make a point.

“It’s a festival of technological innovation, representatives from several triple A corporations will be attending.” He says coolly, no inflection to his voice. Jaebum nods.

“That’s how you’re getting in.” It’s not a question but Jinyoung inclines his head anyway. “You realise security will probably double during the gala, right?” He asks exhaustedly. Kim smiles tightly.

“That’s why we’re trying to hire you. You are on our records as one of the best infiltrators in the world-” well that’s gratifying, if alarming that Renraku keeps records on him; he may have to rectify that after this is over- “if this job could be carried out by one with a lesser skillset, we would of course be looking elsewhere.” Jaebum barks a laugh; that answers another question.

“See, cutting corners to bring down costs is why you people get holes in your code.” He says this like he doesn’t have seven different matrix personas precisely to fleece megacorps by cutting holes in their codes. At least he does it deliberately and subtly and doesn’t break the entire system because of incompetence. Incredibly, Kim actually laughs. Her eyes remain utterly empty; it’s a little bit terrifying.

“That is not the reason.” She sighs, almost expressing an emotion as she side-eyes Jinyoung’s projection. Oh. Jinyoung pointedly doesn’t react so Jaebum doesn’t either, biting his tongue against a retort. “Regardless, the infiltration will, as of the moment, be carried out during the gala. If an alternative route is found during your investigation you are welcome to pursue it.” Well that’s something. 

“And if the theft-” Kim winces again- “fails? What then?” She grimaces in an attempt to smile.

“We think of an alternative plan. You will of course still be adequately compensated.” The “assuming you live” is left unsaid. Jaebum taps his glasses to close the list and massages one temple again.

“I’m assuming I can work remotely from here in Seoul?” Unfortunately Kim shakes her head. Why can’t he have just one thing?

“We’ll be taking the blueprints from the facility and leaving nothing behind. You’re aware of the concept of cloudless storage?” Jaebum doesn’t bother to hide his exasperation; of course he’s aware of it. Fucking condescending corporates, like he hasn’t worked with it before more times than she’s even seen a deck, she doesn’t even have a jack. “We suspect that the blueprints are currently in cloudless storage within the facility; it will be Mr Park’s job to remove the device holding them and yours to decrypt the files.” Jaebum sighs.

“Why can you not just send me the files once you have them?” He asks defeatedly, not expecting to win this one and sure enough, Jinyoung pipes up coldly.

“For the same reason Mitsuhama wants them offline, so they stay out of the matrix and away from deckers like you.” Jaebum itches to mute him again but doesn’t, just pointedly ignores him and folds his arms.

“Fine. I’ll recon from here and get back to you by the end of the week. Send me your deckers’ reports on the ICE they encountered.” Kim nods and Jinyoung sits up a little straighter. 

“Mr Park will become your main point of contact from now on-” oh good- “but in an emergency you can contact me with these same details.” She smiles vaguely and her feed cuts out. Jinyoung’s expression is very carefully neutral so Jaebum copies it, running a hand through his hair and pulling his glasses off.

“How do I contact you?” He asks like he doesn’t still know Jinyoung’s details off by heart; he spent a lot of time staring at them after he left. Jinyoung doesn’t say anything, just flicks a hand towards Jaebum and there’s a ping in his ear. Pressing his lips together, Jaebum nods silently and closes the feed, Jinyoung’s image vanishing into a scatter of light. His shoulders slump, chin dipping to his chest; this would be so much easier if Jinyoung had never come back. At least then he wouldn't know Jinyoung - the Jinyoung of a month ago anyway - still apparently cared about him. But if he  _ really  _ did, why hadn't he come back as soon as he got where he wanted in Renraku? Though of course, none of that makes up for  _ stealing  _ from him.

Feeling rather sorry for himself, Jaebum orders food and ignores all his messages except that from Shiawase - some cursory automated thanks for his work, addressed to the persona he’d used - and he only opens that so he gets the money transferred to him. Youngjae’s getting grumpy as per usual when Jaebum doesn’t respond to him for a couple of days and Mark’s reminding him to actually leave his apartment once in a while; a little uncalled for, he goes out to the gym every few days when he remembers and he does have to buy groceries and stuff too, also when he remembers. He’s going to have to leave to go to Neo-Tokyo in a week or so anyway. Whatever, that’s not a problem for right now; he puts on some trashy show and eats some dumplings.

Suitably fed, Jaebum stretches and sprawls on the sofa, grabbing his deck from the table next to the arm and tapping one of the touchscreen buttons on the side. A light flicks on and a holographic screen appears, showing a list of active installed programs. He switches out the tab from “cracking” to “recon”, the list refreshing and some programs swapping out, reactivating and dinging in his ear when they're ready to use. He sets it back down and sits back up, rubbing his eyes and shuffling up next to it to grab the jack. Well practised by now, he slots it into the port behind his ear with one hand and locks it in place, grimacing at the tingle that runs over his teeth and checking it’s properly in, rubbing where the metal attaches to the surrounding skin. It still itches sometimes despite being metal, as does the cuff on his wrist and his other implants; all chrome does occasionally. He can’t imagine how annoying a whole cyberware arm or leg must be. 

“Here we go, I guess.” He mumbles to himself, closing his eyes and pressing the connector button on the deck.

 

The transition remains unpleasant. What feels like an hour of nothing - literally nothing, no sight, no sound, no sensation from any part of his body - passes before there’s a ping from inside Jaebum’s brain and everything connects back together again. First there’s just flecks of light and an overwhelming sense of space, then the lights coalesce into images and Jaebum can feel his body again.

He stares up at his hub, a tangle of datastreams represented by strings of every possible colour all hanging from a leafless tree, branches a deep violet and trunk paling to lilac, roots diving into the silvery platform suspended in navy cyberspace. The strings lead off ad infinitum, lighting up tiny regions of the matrix until they vanish into the distance. 

Jaebum cracks his neck and flicks upward with his left hand. A flat rectangle rises from the floor, his height and first just white but turning reflective. Jaebum frowns at his avatar; still the one he used with Shiawase, a tall woman with a hoodie on and a scarf over the lower half of her face. He swipes left and the image changes, first to another woman with a lot of chrome, then a couple of bland looking men in leather jackets and a few clones of all of these until he gets to what’s actually  _ his _ persona; he looks mostly like himself, just a bit cartoonish with cooler clothes and a hood and mask that won’t come off. Well, Youngjae says he looks like a cliche hacker from an anime and maybe he’s right - he does have the whole long black coat and heavy boots thing going on after all - but it’s not like  _ Youngjae  _ has to use it. Still, he’s not out to raise suspicion today; he passes on to his recon avatar. It’s literally the default persona given the first time a person logs in, something like a guest account, a grey faceless person. Not something a decker would tend to use, even during recon, but the sort of thing some matrix-averse employee or tentative customer  _ would _ .

Satisfied, Jaebum closes the window and approaches the tree. It towers above him but he focuses on what’s right in front of him; he lays his palm on the trunk, silver pooling around his hand.

“Mitsuhama sovereignty, Neo-Tokyo.” He says aloud; the image of the tree ripples in circular waves out out from his palm and he pulls it away, immediately clenching his fist and peering at the thread he’s now holding. It’s dark bronze, shimmering and pulsing as though with a heartbeat from the tree out into the virtual distance. Jaebum wraps it around his wrist and pulls hard and the hub around him dissolves into shattered pixels; he shuts his eyes and waits.

Eight seconds later he opens his eyes again and looks up at the Mitsuhama sovereign building, a massive skyscraper maybe two hundred stories tall with a couple of shorter buildings surrounding it, all in dark steel and shining glass. Or, the matrix representation of it anyway, likely a mirror of the actual building except with ICE sentries rather than armed guards. There’s a legitimate entryway, an arch cut into the firewall surrounding the building with avatars bustling in and out and it's towards this that Jaebum walks, just another faceless persona in the crowd. 

The security is nothing less than one would expect from Mitsuhama; Jaebum walks past more than seven different types of ICE on his way through the courtyard between the firewall and the building, white and grey. There's definitely black ICE in there somewhere, a lot of it. This is going to be an endeavour.

He follows the majority of the influx, customers and investors heading into the main body of the building but individuals and small groups split off and head around the sides of it, presumably heading for rear entrances. Interesting, but too dangerous to look into without preparation. Probes flank the door, large, white and almost spider-like, stood up on many legs and scanning over those entering with many faceted eyes; confident in his persona’s encryption, he strolls past them, looking up over the foyer. It’s fancy, all expensive decor and bustling employees, most of them VIs but there are a few real personas interspersed among the simulations. The security continues in here, white and grey sentries all over the place; Jaebum's fingers twitch. What has he signed up for?

There’s a ping in his ear and an icon appears in front of him; someone’s calling. A contact he hasn’t registered. Humming suspiciously, Jaebum wanders around aimlessly for a little bit longer, looking over exhibitions on new shows and new tech they have on the market - the call just stays there and pings every so often, whoever it is content to wait apparently - so he doesn’t look suspicious immediately leaving. Once outside the firewall he tugs on the thread still around his wrist and shuts his eyes, back at his hub when he reopens them; he flicks the call icon and recoils when he sees who it is.

“Jaebum?” Jinyoung asks, seeming confused. His image flickers, eyebrows pulling together and lips pursing slightly. Jaebum snaps his fingers and returns to his own persona. “Oh.” He looks slightly embarrassed at his own confusion. Jaebum just waits for him to continue. “Right. Well, I just- wanted to clear something up.” He shifts uncomfortably. Apprehensive, Jaebum cocks his head.

“What?” He asks, maybe a little gruffly. Jinyoung fidgets a little more and looks at something behind the camera.

“Well since we'll be working together I wanted to… clear the air a bit-" if Jaebum needed to breathe in the matrix he'd be holding it- “I know you don't trust me anymore but-" Jaebum scoffs.

“Oh really? What the fuck would give you that idea?” He snaps, heavy with sarcasm. Jinyoung sighs, a muscle under his eye twitching. 

“Look, we're doing this job together, you agreed to that when you signed the contract,” he says through gritted teeth, “which means you need to trust me. Professionally.” 

“You've not exactly been the pinnacle of professionalism.” Jaebum bites out like he isn't the definition of unprofessional all the time. Jinyoung breathes out very slowly then takes another deep breath.

“I know that too-” Jinyoung rubs his eye with two fingertips- “and I apologise for how I've acted the last two meetings. From now on I'll be professional.” Jaebum's chest hurts a lot and he wonders if it’s really wise to poke the bear by asking his next question but at the same time, he really needs to know. 

“Is that all you want to apologise for?” He asks, glad that his avatar can’t really express emotion with either its expressionless face or his voice, modulated and flattened as it is while jacked in. Jinyoung stays silent and just looks at him; that answers that question then. “Alright. I apologise as well, I’ll also behave.” A complicated expression passes over Jinyoung’s face and Jaebum doesn’t let himself try and read into it. “I’ve just had a cursory look at the public front of the Mitsuhama sovereignty. The security is as tight as their reputation would suggest.” He says stiffly; might as well dive right in with it. Jinyoung nods, rubbing his forehead.

“Keep looking around, let me know what you find. I’ll see if management have any idea where the blueprints are stored.” He replies briskly. 

“Alright.” Jaebum replies just as shortly like it’s not awful talking to Jinyoung like this, acquaintances forced to work together. It’s marginally better than yelling at each other though, so he’ll take it over that. “I’ll keep you updated.” Jinyoung nods again and Jaebum mirrors him, ending the call and swiping the window away. His head dips towards his chest and he stares blankly at the hub, miserable and tired despite barely doing anything. Oh well; he doesn’t have time to sit around feeling sorry for himself, he’s got to figure out how to crack Mitsuhama in three weeks. He’s certainly got plenty to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two everyone!! pls let me know what u thought I've been really struggling with this bc it seems to be doing a lot worse than anything else ive written, so pls leave a comment or come talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles) that being said I'm super grateful for anything, kudos and views are wonderful too so thank u!!!! and big love to those of u who commented last chapter u really helped me feel better when I was really disheartened so thank u so much!! <3<3


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this is [scandroid - empty streets](https://youtu.be/9Fw41tjVNpQ) it's a great song and p appropriate esp for one scene in particular which will be obvious if u listen to the song then read this lol <3 also it has the fic title in the lyrics so!! enjoy!!

Over the next few days, Jinyoung remains professional. It’s weird. Or, not weird in the sense that him being professional is weird because of the two of them he was always better at dealing with corps considering Jaebum’s usually ten seconds and one wrong word away from screaming and/or breaking into his employer’s data and picking out the choice bits to sell on, but weird in the sense that Jinyoung’s never spoken to him like this. He’s never been on the receiving end of the professional detachment and it’s really disconcerting and a little bit heartbreaking. But this time he’s really going to make an effort to not be his usual messy self; Jinyoung might be a corporate assassin now and he may have fucked off with Jaebum’s data and a good portion of his heart but he’s his boss now. Sort of. Still, Jaebum’s not going to be an asshole. And he might want to prove that he’s doing perfectly fine on his own, but that’s just a side goal. Honest. 

Besides, he’s got enough on his plate without needlessly antagonising Jinyoung, tempting as it might be; Mitsuhama’s security is ridiculous. He’s poked around the civilian fronts several times now and dived in a little way past their more basic sentries to find some servers of customer data - interesting that their most easily crackable security goes here - and spy down some corridors towards more exciting parts only to see black ICE literally two layers in from the front and half of it is modded to hell with any sort of damage limiter removed. It’s taken some serious work to get anywhere, let alone to what’s likely one of the more heavily guarded parts of their database. He’d managed to find a map of the building and its corresponding matrix counterpart; it’s one for mid level employees so some of it is still redacted but Jaebum’s got a vague idea of where the blueprints are being held - somewhere in the basements, possibly one of the bottom two of four sublevels. These floors are entirely redacted on his map, which is annoying and they’re unfortunately far from the floors in which the gala will be held, but then Jaebum’s here for getting Jinyoung through the cyberspace defences without alarms being raised on his end; it’s Jinyoung’s job to actually get there. Wherever there turns out to be.

It’s this he’s currently working on uncovering; he’s hovering at the corner of a corridor, staring down at a sentry walking away from him past the elevator. Grey ICE, so he’s not going to  _ die _ if he alerts it, but it could trash his deck if he’s not careful. He glances back over his shoulder, checking that nothing’s coming up behind him, then watches the sentry stomp its way around the far corner. Silently he makes his way to the elevator and presses his gloved hand to the button, silver melting around his palm. The doors slide open with a distorted ding to reveal the empty shaft, the elevator currently between the 117th and 118th floors. He’s on the ground floor, so he’ll have a few seconds to get down should someone press for the basement. The feed he has up in front of him shows the corridor outside the elevator door of the second-lowest basement - this is as low as the elevator goes, bottom basement apparently not even on the basic access system - it’s currently empty.

Something pings in his ear and a call icon appears next to the camera feed - good thing he slotted the masking program else that would have been a beacon lighting up and telling every sentry on this floor his precise location. Shaking his head, Jaebum taps it and nods at Jinyoung.

“I’ve-” Jaebum steps into the elevator shaft and mutes Jinyoung briefly when he yelps in alarm, twisting in midair and throwing out a palm when he reaches the third sub-basement’s door, bright green glove melting a hole in the code making up the metal enough that he can get a grip and stop himself falling; the shaft continues down quite a bit further, probably dumping out into cyberspace specifically for this possibility. He thuds into the door quite hard but it’s with a barely audible thump, muffler programs kicking in to quiet it down. It also thankfully doesn’t hurt; with a grunt he hauls himself up and, feet braced on the edge of the doors, presses his other palm to the metal, melting another hole into it then reaching through to hold it against the open button. With another distorted ping, the doors slide open and Jaebum swings inside. He unmutes Jinyoung and pulls up a keyboard next to his left hand, tapping out a message.

**Sorry about that.**

Jinyoung blinks at him a few times; while he’s dumbstruck, the hack on the elevator door times out and they slide shut again. Doesn’t get rid of the holes, but a bit of smoothing over and they’re good as new, like no one ever punched through them. Tracks covered, Jaebum looks both ways down the corridor: to the left, a door; to the right, a junction. Jaebum heads towards the door, closing down the camera feed and bringing up a bot that scans ahead with a flick of his fingers; beyond the door is a large room crawling with figures, probably ICE.

“How, um, is the recon going?” Jinyoung asks, hushed like anyone except Jaebum can hear him. Jaebum taps out a reply without looking at him or the keyboard - it’s all mental anyway, the keyboard and all of this is just a manageable representation of cyberspace - and crouches down next to the door. 

**I’m in the third basement there’s lots of ICE around.**

He reaches into his coat and pulls out a wire with a tiny camera on the end, feeding it under the very corner of the door; the door is probably trapped but this little beauty is small enough to sneak through most security. Most of the time. It works this time; he gets a full image of the interior. It’s a database, banks and banks of virtual servers though he has no real clue what’s in them. This far into the secure interior of Mitsuhama though, it has to be something important. Maybe bank details, blackmail material, corporates’ information. Not what he’s looking for and there’s no throughway; he stands up and heads back past the elevator, stashing the camera back into his pocket.

“Any sign of the blueprints?” Jinyoung asks at more of a normal volume. Jaebum shakes his head.

**Nothing yet not deep enough.**

Jinyoung nods. Jaebum pauses at the corner, scanner pulling up the corridors reaching either side; there’s a sentry heading right towards him from the right, maybe four metres away. Well, shit; he plasters himself to the right-hand wall, watching it through the feed and waiting until it’s right next to him. It’s just moved past the corner without noticing him - white ICE is not the most aware of the bunch, he’ll have two seconds before its scanners notice him - when Jaebum slips behind it and punches a hand through its back, silver spreading over the white and eating it away; he ends up with a handful of scrap metal that melts into nothing, the remaining structure of the program dissolving into pixels and vanishing. 

“Everything alright?” Jinyoung asks. Jaebum cracks his neck.

**Gotta leave soon had to break some ice.**

Jinyoung frowns and rubs at his jaw. 

“Will they track it back to you?” His lack of faith is a little hurtful. 

**Of course they won’t do you take me for an amateur?**

He looks a little mollified at least. Jaebum focusses on scanning the corridor; the left hand path leads towards another series of corridors, twisting and turning maze-like deeper into the facility while the right seems to stop. Just, stop at a dead end. Despite the sentry having come from that direction. Jaebum eyes the white walls suspiciously. 

A ticking starts up at the back of Jaebum’s head; someone’s gearing up to scan the area. Quickly he marks the area on his map of the building and runs back to the elevator doors; the lift itself is still up above the hundredth floor, which is actually fairly annoying since he can’t hitch a ride on it. Well, desperate times and all that; he whirls around, drawing a doorway onto the wall in silver and stepping through it when it glows yellow, squinting as he emerges into the bright virtual lights of the Neo-Tokyo matrix entertainment hub, the door snapping closed behind him half a second later. 

“What are you doing?” Jinyoung sounds irritated. Maybe he’s already asked that but he should know Jaebum gets single-minded while jacked in.

Oh. Maybe he doesn’t know, maybe he doesn’t remember. Miserable all over again, Jaebum flicks over to one of his boring personas and gets lost in the crowd, ambling aimlessly through the virtual streets of Shinjuku, neon glinting off everything and the clamour of the crowds pounding in his ears. He mutes it, sighing into the newfound silence and typing his response.

**Caught heat I’ll go back in later.**

He’s not sure why he doesn’t just say that out loud. Well, he is sure, he just doesn’t want to talk to Jinyoung for a multitude of reasons, but he’ll tell himself he doesn’t know why. 

“Alright. Did you find anything useful?” Jaebum shrugs, slipping between a group of teens wearing anime characters as personas. Well, he assumes they’re teens, could be anyone really. The wonders of the matrix.

**Possible concealed area could be what we’re after.**

“Good.” Jinyoung says but he doesn’t hang up, instead staring at Jaebum’s avatar with an expression approaching apprehension. “Be careful.” He eventually says. Stunned, Jaebum stops still in the middle of the datastream, the crowds parting and milling around him as he stares at Jinyoung in disbelief. A muscle in his jaw flexing, Jinyoung keeps his nose in the air, looking down it somewhat at Jaebum but he’s always done that when he’s defensive.

“I will.” He eventually manages to stutter. Brow tightening almost sadly, Jinyoung nods and his image freezes, then fractures into nothing, the call ending with a click. Virtual crowds bustling around him and lit by pink and green neon, Jaebum wonders what the hell that was all about.

 

“You really are a dumbass aren't you?” Mark groans, forehead dropping onto the sticky table. Absolutely not sulking, Jaebum takes another swig of beer and slams down the empty bottle, glowering at the top of his head. 

“I don't mean to be! I just don't- I don't understand him anymore. Maybe I never did.” He mumbles the last part, shoulders hunching and tears prickling behind his eyes. Maybe drinking with Mark wasn't the best idea, he's always been a weepy drunk after all. 

“I hate you.” Mark grumbles, but he does lift his head, rubbing at the red mark on his forehead with his left hand and grabbing his beer with his right. “He stole from you, deckhead, why didn't you just cut him off after that? I would.” Jaebum huffs.

“He's the one that came back!” He folds his arms, lips twisting into a grimace. “This would be easier if he hadn't, then we could actually move past it and just be- I don’t know, awkward or cold rather than- this.” But no, he had to barge back in a month ago and drag up all his mostly buried feelings and be all- all stubborn and angry and  _ Jinyoung  _ about it. Jaebum slumps lower in his chair, staring at the lights reflected on water puddled on the table; they all have something of a halo around them. He really is drunk.

“You're a mess.” Mark observes. Jaebum doesn't know if he means right now or is just referring to his life in general but it doesn't really matter because both are true. “I need another drink, you want one?” Jaebum nods morosely. Shaking his head, Mark clambers to his feet, wobbles a bit and pats Jaebum clumsily on the shoulder before tottering off to the bar. Alone, Jaebum slumps over the table, chin pillowed on his folded arms and his eyes drooping closed. Life is so complicated. It’s all the people in it, it’s so much easier when he’s working. ICE doesn’t have feelings and neither do corporations, there’s none of this messiness. Just him and the matrix and all the data he can stuff into his deck. 

He must zone out or fall asleep or something because the next thing he consciously registers is cold wet plastic against his arm; Mark shoves another beer bottle into his hands and knocks back a third of his in one go. Jaebum takes his a little more leisurely, propping his chin on the heel of his right hand and sipping from the bottle. It’s actually pretty disgusting, but it is strong.

“How’s your biz going?” He asks, snorting when Mark groans.

“Poorly. Lone Star is full of assholes, I can’t believe I agreed to infiltrate them.” He complains, nursing his drink bitterly. That’s Lone Star Security for you. Jaebum’s had a few run-ins with them and they’re generally incompetent or bloodthirsty with very little in-between. But then that’s what happens in private police forces, all of them are the same all over the world. 

“Pays well though, right?” Mark inclines his head.

“It does. Still don’t even know what they want me to look for though.” If Jaebum remembers right, Mark’s looking for blackmail material against the head of the Lone Star presence in Seoul, something about him covering up a murder of some corp’s son. He’s not sure why this corp hired a street samurai over a decker considering there’ll definitely be evidence somewhere online, but he’s stopped questioning their logic a long time ago and it’s very well-paid, so he’s glad for Mark getting it. 

“I’m sure all will become clear.” Jaebum mumbles, swigging from his bottle again and blinking hard to try and clear his fuzzy vision. It doesn’t work.

“I fucking hope so.” Mark grumbles, knocking back his bottle too. 

This last beer has Jaebum very definitely tipping over from very tipsy to sloppily drunk. Thankfully this bar is close to his apartment, only two blocks over; this is useful considering Mark announces with a groan that some of his Lone Star “friends” are asking him to go meet them for more drinks somewhere - he’s not as much of a lightweight as Jaebum, he’ll be fine - which means Jaebum’s got to stumble home alone. And oh boy does he stumble. No vomiting though, so he’ll count that as a win for now. 

It’s warm out, sticky and humid; Jaebum, already warm enough from the beer blanket, groans and shucks his fake-leather jacket, trudging home with it over his shoulder. About two in the morning, the lights of the streets and the skyscrapers near and distant are at full glow, bathing Jaebum in what could be mistaken for daylight if it wasn’t mostly pinks and blues and greens from all the signs, advertising everything from convenience stores to takeaways to strip clubs. As he looks up, one of the semi-distant skyscrapers lights up all in white, shattering into colours and reforming into an advertisement for one of Mitsuhama’s new simsense shows, something about superheroes or something.

Eyeing a couple of chipheads draped on top of each other in the doorway of a simsense parlour, Jaebum sighs, feeling a little more sober as he considers Mitsuhama. He's going to have to up his game a bit if he wants to get much deeper, or at least not let Jinyoung call him during infiltrations. Distracting asshole. He's so pretty, it's annoying, plus he keeps  _ talking  _ while Jaebum’s trying to work. And great, now he's thinking about Jinyoung's stupid pretty face and how Jinyoung probably hates him and how  _ Jaebum _ should hate  _ him _ but  _ doesn't _ and he's too drunk to stop himself. Great.

Grumpy and tired, Jaebum swipes into his building with a pass of his wrist and stumbles into the elevator. He smacks the button for the twenty first floor and groans when it jolts into motion; jerky elevator plus being drunk equals bad things apparently. He manages to hold it together though, lurching through the doors as soon as they open and bracing himself against the wall as the corridor spins and his stomach ties itself in knots. When he manages to straighten up without falling straight back down again, he trudges to his door, swiping inside and letting the door slam shut behind him. Home sweet home. He kicks his shoes off, chucks his jacket aside - tidying is for sober Jaebum - and flops face down on his sofa.

Something dings at him. Jaebum ignores it and determinedly shuts his eyes. Sleep is the only way he definitely won't consciously think about work or Jinyoung. Unconscious is fine, that's not his fault. Sort of. 

It dings again. Jaebum groans and turns his head slightly.

“What?” He barks. The screen on the table lights up.

“Are you- what are you doing?” Of course, of  _ course  _ it's Jinyoung, he can't have one fucking night to drink and mope on his own; beyond annoyed at both him and the stupid happy feeling he gets seeing him even though they're not even friends let alone anything else, Jaebum sits up and tries not to visibly wobble.

“What is it?” He asks, blinking hard. Jinyoung frowns at him. 

“Are you drunk?” He sounds accusing, or he does to Jaebum's very much drunk ears - he’s probably just amused or slightly exasperated but, indignant, Jaebum points at him and is about to say no, but realises he's unable to sit without swaying side to side and drops his hand again.

“Yes.” He sticks his nose in the air in a poor attempt to look as dignified as Jinyoung does when he does it. Jinyoung's lips twitch and he looks away, nostrils flaring as he tries not to laugh. “Shut it, I can do what I want.” He stops trying not to and just laughs, covering his mouth with his right hand. Jaebum looks away, chewing on the inside of his cheek; he never used to cover his smile around him. “What do you want?” He mumbles, shoulders slumping. Jinyoung’s mirth fades and he drops his hand, lips twisting into something almost sad. 

“I just- wanted to check in. Wondering if you’d made any more progress. I- uh, management was asking.” He explains stiffly, rubbing the side of his neck. Jaebum blinks very slowly; sounds suspect. But Jaebum’s a bit too drunk to be sure that he knows what he’s talking about, so for now he’ll just go with it.

“Haven’t been in since earlier. Got drunk instead.” He rubs his jaw, scratching at his stubble. He needs a shave. Not right now, obviously, but soon. 

“Right.” Jinyoung coughs, hiding his mouth again. “Well, um. Keep me posted.” Jaebum nods and narrows his eyes.

“Why not just message me? You didn’t need to call.” He says bluntly. Jinyoung visibly stiffens even through the flickering image.

“Would you prefer that?” He asks, cold and back with the professionalism. Jaebum slumps a bit, not entirely sure whether he would. He  _ should _ , but at the same time he likes seeing him. Maybe he’s just a masochist.

“I just assumed you would.” Jinyoung blinks at his reluctant mumble, a complicated expression passing over his face. “Whatever. It’s fine. Call if you want.” He mutters before Jinyoung can say anything, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll let you know what I find out tomorrow.” Jinyoung audibly sighs, expression twisting like he’s fighting with himself over something. 

“Alright. Be careful-” again with this, Jaebum might start thinking he cares about him at this rate- “and don’t forget to drink some water before you go to sleep.” Well that’s just unfairly confusing; a slightly pained look passing over his face, Jinyoung closes the feed before Jaebum can gather his wits and reply, leaving him in the dark on his couch, drunkenly swaying from side to side. He lists to the right, collapsing against the sofa, burying his face into the cushion and ignoring the wet patch that starts growing under his cheek.

 

Oh he regrets a lot of things; Jaebum groans, pulse battering a tattoo onto the interior of his skull and his mouth dry like he’s spent six hours jacked in. Even just turning his head has him wanting to be sick and he’s actually confused as to why for a minute before he remembers most of what happened last night. Namely all the drinking and the brief and confusing conversation with Jinyoung and his subsequent crying and passing out without following his admittedly wise advice and drinking water. A poor decision on his part. Clutching at his aching head, Jaebum sits up. 

“Time?” He rasps, squinting at the screen when it lights up. Half seven. Great. “When did Jinyoung hang up?” Ten past three. Even better. Jaebum wipes at where he'd been drooling onto the couch and stands up on wobbly legs, turning the screen off with a flick of his fingers and stumbling into the bathroom. 

Suitably washed and having knocked back a few pints of water, he trudges to his bed and flops into it facedown with a groan, hoping for another hour at least. No point in jacking in yet, he's still a bit drunk and he'd only be sloppy and probably get dumped out by the first sentry he hits. Well, dumped out or straight up killed. Either way, not a good idea, maybe not for the rest of the day.

It’ll probably piss Jinyoung off though. And Renraku as a whole, but Jaebum’s never given a shit about keeping megacorps happy. Jinyoung on the other hand… a good portion of his last five years of life was spent trying to make him happy, but that apparently wasn’t good enough. Miserable all over again, Jaebum grabs his pillow and drags it over his head, nose pressing uncomfortably to the threadbare mattress. Stupid Jinyoung, why couldn’t he just be satisfied with leaving and stealing from him and fucking off to Japan to clean for Renraku? Why did he have to come back and stir everything up again and then end up working with him now?

Jaebum groans. So much of his life nowadays seems to be spent questioning it or lamenting past mistakes, his and other peoples’. He’s sick of it to be quite honest. Maybe it’s time to stop. He sighs and snuggles more comfortably into bed; he’ll sleep this hangover off and once he’s woken up - probably tomorrow - he’ll stop being such a sap and just get on with this job, confusing signals from Jinyoung be damned. He’ll get through it, he gets through everything. He’ll just get royally shitfaced at the end of it. 

 

It turns out he was right; that odd abrupt end to the corridor was not, in fact, the end of the corridor. The cloaking is well done, as would be expected from a triple A megacorp, but nothing Jaebum’s not cracked before; magic worked, he stands in front of the blank white wall and watches it dissolve into nothing. The corridor continues a short way to a stairwell, all white and brightly lit by fluorescent lighting. Presumably leading to the final sub-basement. Jaebum nods to himself and heads to the stairs. 

However this unfortunately is where his map runs out so he’ll be running blind from here on unless he can find one in here - probably a bit much to hope for one on the wall. He flicks his recorder on, eyeing the 3D map it creates as he walks, hovering just at the corner of his vision, then gingerly looks over the staircase. Doesn’t seem bugged, but then that’s the point he supposes; he crouches at the edge of the stairs, tapping at his cuff and flicking away from himself. The corridor ripples, swimming like he’s looking through a heat haze, the matrix itself wavering under the scanner. It comes back clean and Jaebum straightens up, confidently walking down the staircase. Nothing happens and he descends, for far longer than a one floor descent should take. 

Eventually he reaches the bottom; it stops at a brief landing and a single black door. All very ominous but Jaebum approaches it, knowing that the landing itself isn’t trapped at the very least. He reaches into his coat and pulls out a pair of gloves, cream leather but long worn and soft; he tugs them on and holds up both hands, palms towards the door, slowly moving them closer. When he gets about two inches away the air trembles, Jaebum’s ears popping like he’s gone through a tunnel. Shit. He drops his hands again and folds his arms, glaring at the door; there’s black ICE wired into it. Not anything that detects, at least not deliberately - it’s effectively a bomb, triggered by attempting to open the door without deactivating it somehow. 

Cursing his own idiocy for even considering taking this contract, Jaebum rustles around in his pockets and pulls out the brackets, two little copper-coloured squares that he sticks to the wall either side of the door, far enough away that they won’t set off anything unpleasant. He backs away a few steps just in case.

“Online.” He says aloud. Or, aloud to the brackets anyway, no one else would hear him even should they be stood right next to him. Not that it would matter in that case, but still; the brackets crackle on, a soft click echoing in Jaebum’s ear as a wire extends from each, touching the door frame on either side. There’s another pop but no explosion and the door becomes transparent. Most of it anyway; the wood becomes clear but the ICE, the cables and wires running up and down the door and the black mass in the centre covered in little blinking lights, is clearly visible. Jaebum glares at it. It’s an ugly thing, or rather, ugly in its high quality design. It’s actually a very sleek piece of kit, an obviously expensive and lovingly crafted code, but right now it’s the ugliest, most irritating thing Jaebum’s ever seen. Grumbling to himself under his breath, Jaebum rips his cream gloves off and digs around in his pocket again - they’re metaphorical pockets representing his deck’s storage, it just sucks he can’t have infinite pocket space offline - and drags out another pair, these bright red and much more stiff; he’s less used to using this program but it still fits perfectly. 

Swearing to himself, he approaches the door again. The weakest points of the ICE are, ironically, right in the middle, the wired connections to the central detonator. Which does mean Jaebum has to stick his hands right into the middle of a bomb but, well, he’s getting paid a lot of money; if he was breathing in here he’d hold his breath. Reciting the order to pull the wires out in his head like a prayer, he reaches for the first one, dreading his ears popping. 

Thankfully they don’t. His fingers sink through the wood of the door like it isn’t there and he gingerly grips the first wire. It’s loose and he pulls sharply, yanking it from the housing and bracing to be dumped straight out. But he isn’t, and he’s not dead, so he’ll take that as a win. Painfully slowly, he pulls all the wires free and could collapse with relief when the last one comes loose and all of the lights on the central mass switch off. Still not trusting it entirely, he swaps a glove for a cream one again and holds his hand up to it, restraining himself from punching the air when his ears don’t pop and he can grasp the door handle. It’s not even locked. 

He doesn’t open it quite yet though, fishing out a tiny camera and feeding it underneath to check what’s on the other side: not a great deal. An empty corridor in fact, with a little bit of motion far away to the left but moving away from him. It stretches off to the right too and both directions are lined with doors on both sides of the hall. A lot of doors. Jaebum swears colourfully in his head. Why can’t this just be easy? All he’s asking for is a big sign saying “deck blueprints here”, is that so much to ask? Now he’s got four hundred rooms to comb through while dodging bombs like that. He should ask for a raise.

Still, four hundred rooms aren’t going to comb themselves; Jaebum slips through the door and taps his cuff again. The matrix ripples again, this time out from him in concentric circles and the map in his periphery expands with it.

Jaebum swears again. Loudly. They aren’t rooms, they’re corridors. This is a fucking maze. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey ho its into the matrix we go !! let me know what u thought either in the comments or my [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles) I wanna know what u guys think!!


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is actually one I think that sums up jjp's relationship in this fic really well so please go check it out!!! it's [aphelion by scandroid](https://youtu.be/hR_kOfguiAg) and it's super gooood (if u don't know ~~like I didnt when I first saw it lol~~ aphelion means the point in a planet's orbit when it's furthest from the sun so,,,, yeah take from that what u will)

Jaebum fidgets, painfully aware that this is the first time he’s called Jinyoung since this business began; he’s just messaged him before or Jinyoung’s called him. He seems to want him to sweat somewhat too, it’s been ringing for the last three minutes, but well, he needs to talk to him about how to proceed. Maybe he’s being uncharitable. Maybe Jinyoung’s just in the shower or something.

Jaebum grabs a cushion and crushes it to his face; now he’s thinking about Jinyoung showering and that’s not where he wants his thoughts to be when he answers. 

Well he has time to think about something else; he had time to make instant ramen and eat half of it before Jinyoung answers. He almost drops his ramen in fact, tuning out the buzzing of the call and jumping out of his skin at an abrupt greeting.

“Everything alright?” Jinyoung asks, eyeing him choking on noodles with some small measure of uncertainty. Coughing, Jaebum nods and puts the ramen on the floor next to his feet, blinking quickly against the tears gathered in his eyes.

“Yeah, sorry,” he wheezes, “forgot I was calling you, you made me jump.” Jinyoung snorts softly but it doesn’t sound malicious. 

“What is it?” He asks, brisk but not unfriendly. Very professional. Jaebum sighs.

“I found the bottom sub-basement. I can get in there. But I don’t know if the cyberspace version corresponds to the physical one.” He explains stiffly, pulling open his map and sending a copy to Jinyoung; he presumably opens it too, frowning at something to the left of the camera. 

“Seems rather unlikely that all of this fits underneath the Mitsuhama building.” Jinyoung muses. Jaebum nods, scratching absently around the port on the back of his neck.

“I know, I expect it’s just all the security around the blueprints and whatever else is in there-” he sighs, rubbing his eyes- “I’ve looked for building plans in the Neo-Tokyo archives, but there’s nothing mentioning even one basement in the sovereignty, even in the classified sections, so Mitsuhama must have had the records purged when they took ownership.” Jinyoung blinks, apparently surprised.

“You went through the municipal archives already?” He asks incredulously. Jaebum shrugs.

“They got me to fix their security a few months ago, I have a backdoor in.” Jinyoung huffs, looking begrudgingly impressed. Jaebum preens a little bit but tries to keep it internal. “Either way, it didn’t actually help, I still don’t know what the lowest basement looks like and sending you in blind is stupid. I’ll try and find a physical map next time I go in.” Jinyoung nods.

“How long will it take to cut through the security?” Cut through- hopefully there will be minimal cutting, that’s pretty much the opposite of subtle. 

“I can’t say yet, but probably a week at least. There’s still two until the gala, right?” Another nod, one Jaebum returns. “When do we have to go to Neo-Tokyo?” He’s not looking forward to it.

“Some time towards the end of the week. Renraku’s planning on organising your flight and accommodation, so you won’t need to do anything about that.” Well, that’s good; hopefully they will pay too rather than just take if from what they owe him at the end of this. Might be wishful thinking, but oh well. “I’ll let you know.” 

“Thanks.” Jaebum mutters, ruffling his hair and picking up his ramen again. “I’ll head back into the basement later this evening.” Jinyoung nods. Then fidgets a little. Jaebum pauses in his movement to hang up and eyes him warily; he clearly wants to say something else. “What is it?” He asks suspiciously. Jinyoung sighs and rubs his forehead. 

“Nothing.” He sounds very tired all of a sudden. “Goodbye Jaebum.” And he hangs up before Jaebum can say anything else. Well. Blinking a few times, Jaebum shrugs and goes back to his ramen, pretending he’s not incredibly curious as to what he so obviously wanted to say. 

Unfortunately he doesn’t get to enjoy his admittedly quite cold noodles for long though; barely minutes later another call starts blasting in his ear. Sighing heavily, he puts the ramen down again.

“What?” He barks.

“Well, someone’s woken up more of an asshole than usual.” Youngjae sniffs. Jaebum pinches the bridge of his nose.

“What do you want? I paid you three days ago.” Even with his so-called friend discount, his fixing services are not cheap. Youngjae scoffs.

“Could I not just want to speak to you? You’re my friend, Jaebum.” He sounds hurt. There’s no video to the call so Jaebum can’t tell if he actually is or just trying to make him feel guilty. What’s annoying is that it works.

“Right. Sorry.” He mumbles, sagging when Youngjae immediately bursts into laughter. That’s even more annoying.

“I’m kidding, deckhead,” he manages to say once he’s done, “how’s the biz going? Jinyoung ripped your head off yet?” Jaebum rolls his eyes.

“No,” he says shortly, “it’s fine. We’re fine.” Youngjae hums skeptically. 

“Sounds suspicious.” Forcing himself not to just hang up, Jaebum massages his forehead.

“Whatever. It’s fine. I’ll be heading to Neo-Tokyo sometime next week I think.” Not the smoothest change of subject out there but a necessary one; as good a friend as he is, Youngjae is insufferably nosy. He usually knows when to stop pushing though and recognises this as one of such times, relenting with an unconvinced hum.

“Alright. Keep me posted. And put the Shiawase stuff up on the boards.” Oh. Jaebum could have sworn he already did that, but maybe it slipped his mind with all the other things happening in his life right now, though it’s not like he’s not forgotten for no reason before. 

“Sure, I’ll do it tomorrow.” He replies, tapping his cuff to make sure he’s got a reminder to do it. 

“Cool. Talk soon.” And he hangs up. Jaebum really doesn’t know why everyone he knows hangs up without letting him say goodbye.

 

The maze is certainly well made. Jaebum pored over it for most of the night, literally until he passed out on his couch and woke up two hours later at five in the morning to realise he did this and drag himself to actual bed. There seems to be a space in the centre of it, a region of nothing or, as is more likely, an area shielded by something that his cursory scanner can’t punch through; this is probably where the blueprints are. It also means he’s going to have to crack some rather formidable defences further in, but he’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it.

Still, he’s got some idea of where he’s going at least and infiltrating down to the entrance of the lowest basement is getting somewhat repetitive now that he’s done it a few times. Interestingly the bomb in the door hasn’t been fixed and no new defences have been put in so they’re either cocky and think the intruder was taken care of by some black ICE further in or just plain stupid and don’t check the entrance regularly. Jaebum’s personally hoping for the former so he doesn’t later find out they’ve put it back once they have checked, likely on the night of the theft so he gets held up sorting that. He’ll just factor that into the infiltration plan so he won’t get taken off-guard should it happen.

They would have reason to be cocky however as a cursory glance under the door this time reveals no less than three different sentries, all black ICE, marching their way from left to right, maybe ten feet away from the door. Jaebum reels back and sprints halfway up the stairs, counting the seconds until he’s sure they’ve gone past and hoping none are stood at the doorway when he eventually creeps back down to it. Thankfully two of them are still patrolling further down and the third disappears behind a door, so Jaebum judges it safe enough to crack the door open and finally slip into the lowest basement. 

Unfortunately for him, to get closer to the dead spot in the centre of the maze he has to follow the black ICE, at least for a little while. He keeps a safe distance, far enough to keep out of eyeshot of the lenses set into the back of the bulky chrome bodies; they’re menacing things, half his height again and covered in metal plating, these particular programs coming with the option to damage both deck and decker, both of which are things Jaebum would like to avoid. 

He has to turn off before they do; he crouches next to the appropriate door - it’s not trapped as far as he can tell and no alarms go off when he slips the camera underneath; the corridor beyond is empty but the floor just ends barely half a metre inside. Swearing in his head, Jaebum straightens up and, glaring at the sentries, slips inside. He’s forced to cling to the door while its open, flattening himself against it as it shuts; the floor drops away into nothing for a good eight metres before it reforms back into the corridor as though nothing were amiss, navy cyberspace lit only by distant datastreams stretching away below. This bit is presumably not in the physical building. He really needs to find an offline map.

Well. Shit. Jaebum peers at the opposite corridor; there’s a couple of cameras up where the wall meets the ceiling almost exactly where the floor drops off. It would be tight but he might, if he could cross the gap, be able to keep himself out of sight while blinding them. Of course he could just shoot them out, but that’s not exactly the subtlest of options for a reconnaissance mission. But then none of that matters if he can’t get over there in the first place; if he’d thought of this he’d have swapped out a couple of programs, he’d easily be able to get across. He should just jack out and swap them out and come back but it took thirty minutes of dodging through ICE and employees - today was especially busy for some reason - just to get down to the bottom basement. 

Fuck it, he’ll try it. If he runs along the wall and jumps for it, he should be able to catch onto the edge and pull himself up. And he wouldn’t  _ die  _ if he fell. Actually - he crouches down, scanning down into the hole. They haven’t bothered to alarm it, so he wouldn’t even be detected. But that’s all irrelevant because he’s not  _ going  _ to fall, it’s not  _ that  _ big a gap and he’s got some programs equipped which mean he’ll stick to the wall a bit and let him jump a bit further. It’ll be fine.

Jaebum opens the door again and backs up a few steps, quickly calculating how far he needs to run along the wall before jumping, then sprints for it, pushing off and up onto the wall, using the momentum to run along it for a few steps. His boots stick a little bit, enough to stop him slipping down but not so much as to hinder his forward progress and about halfway across he jumps. 

A message blinks at the corner of his vision but he ignores it, catching the edge of the platform with both hands and slamming hard into it with a grunt; his gloves stick too, much more than the soles of his boots and it’s easy to shuffle over to the far wall and pull himself up, clinging to it to keep himself behind the cameras. Irritably he bats the message away without looking at it, glaring up at the cameras and pulling a pair of timed dampeners from his pocket - tiny metal circles that when he tosses them into the air, one towards each camera, magnetise to their surfaces. There’s a buzz and a hiss and, when he scans the hallway again, both of them are inactive, any error messages suppressed and not sending to the central server until they deactivate in about ten minutes. 

Map filling in with more detail as he walks, Jaebum heads down the corridor, ignoring more messages - it’s probably just Youngjae being annoying - and turning where necessary, a couple of times waiting for ICE sentries to cross his path where others bisect it and taking out more cameras as he goes. It’s worryingly easy. But obviously, this doesn’t continue; apparently Mitsuhama likes dumping out intruders without any effort on their part as once again he comes to a section of corridor with holes in it. Different to before, this isn’t just an expanse of empty space but a series of platforms interspersed irregularly for a good length of the corridor, some with gaps of a couple of metres between them. 

Jaebum suspiciously approaches the edge of the gap; there are a couple of chunks of floor still attached and he tests one with his foot, one sticky glove planted on the wall to keep his balance. Sure enough, it trembles then collapses downwards, shattering into light when it’s fallen far enough from the rest of the structure. Jaebum sighs. Great. He bats away yet another message reminder and backs up again before running and leaping off the closest platform. It crumbles beneath his foot but he manages to jump without issue, springing between them and working his way down the corridor.

He makes it halfway before an alarm starts blaring. It’s not coming from any ICE however, but from him; half a dozen red warning panels light up in front of his eyes and a siren wails at the back of his head. 

Someone’s in his apartment.

Stunned, Jaebum lingers half a second too long on one platform and it starts falling; he jumps from it anyway, desperately reaching out for another despite knowing it’ll just fall too but it doesn’t matter because his fingertips skim the edge and he falls into cyberspace. 

His avatar shatters and he’s unceremoniously dumped back into his body; overwhelmed by the sudden onset of sensation, everything seizes up, muscles spasming and clenching painfully and chest constricting as he automatically tries and fails to gasp in some air. Eyes flying open but sightless for now, Jaebum tries to speak, even just to groan as every muscle starts protesting violently at their mistreatment but his jaw is locked shut and he can’t even breathe, let alone say anything. Something wet and warm trickles from his nose and down the back of his throat, iron bursting on his tongue; he wants to gag but just ends up choking on his own blood, spilling out over his lips.

Everything jars when someone yanks the jack from the back of his neck and this time he manages to wheeze as pain lances down his spine and up into his head, spasms ceasing enough that he can curl up and gasp, clutching at his aching chest and panting his breath back, blood trickling from his nose into his open mouth. There’s a hand on his shoulder but he can’t think enough to be alarmed about it, blinking quickly and forcing his breathing to steady out until his vision starts to return, dark and cloudy at the edges.

Something drips off his chin and he wipes blindly at it, grimacing to see red staining on his t-shirt and painting his hand. His nose is still bleeding freely and he blots at it with his wrist, gingerly straightening himself out from the pained ball into which he’d curled himself.

“Here.” A bundle of tissues is shoved into his hands and he holds it to his nose, following the gloved hand up an arm in a suit jacket to see an uncharacteristically - well, uncharacteristic nowadays anyway - concerned Jinyoung staring at him. There are dark circles under his eyes and his face is pale and Jaebum dimly remembers the first time he ever saw him get dumpshock, how panicked and shaky he'd been, almost worse than Jaebum despite him being the one violently shoved back into consciousness. He doesn't look much better now but Jaebum’s not currently feeling very sympathetic.

“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?” He croaks, voice painfully hoarse and cracking every other word. He at least has the decency to look sheepish, leaning back and looking away. 

“You never changed your override code.” He mutters, the hand closest to Jaebum clenching in the worn fabric of the couch cushions. Sluggish with lingering pain, it takes Jaebum a second to figure out what he’s talking about but when he does his blood runs cold; the override code to his apartment door should someone without his cuff need to get in. He never got around to changing it. Which means it’s still Jinyoung’s birth date.

“That doesn’t answer my question.” He eventually rasps. A muscle in Jinyoung’s jaw twitches.

“Management organised the trip to Neo-Tokyo. I have your flights and accommodation.” Again, this is not a valid reason for him to be in Jaebum’s apartment considering he could just send them to him, you know, via the matrix. Also doesn’t explain why he didn’t respect the age old human custom of waiting until one is  _ invited  _ inside before entering someone else’s house. “I messaged you.” Once again, not an excuse to barge into his  _ house _ . Jaebum sighs and blots at his nose some more, adjusting the tissues to bleed into a dry bit.

“Why are you really here?” He asks quietly; it’s clearly important, though whether important enough for breaking and entering Jaebum’s not sure. On cue, Jinyoung’s chin dips to his chest, lips twisting almost nervously. Then he moves, slowly as though trying not to spook him or something, dipping a hand into his pocket and pulling something out. A thumb drive and a credit chip; he sets them onto the table and sits back straight, palms rubbing up and down his thighs twitchily.

“Those are for you.” He nods at it. Jaebum eyes it suspiciously. “It’s- what I owe you.” He licks his lips, angling his face a little more away from Jaebum’s. 

“For what?” Jaebum asks, mouth even drier than before. Jinyoung takes a deep breath then lets it all out at once, shoulders drooping with it.

“For the data I took. Everything I got selling it to Renraku, plus interest.” Well. That’s not at all what Jaebum was expecting. His breath rushes out of him and he struggles to get it back, nameless dread filling him and he’s not even entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because this feels final. This is the last loose end between them, once this is gone that’s it, just this job and then nothing tying them together. Which shouldn’t even be a bad thing; why did Jinyoung have to come back a month ago and remind Jaebum of all the fucking things he’d been trying to move past, like how he’s still stupidly fucking loves him even after everything he did?

“Why?” He doesn’t have to do this. Not that it probably makes a dent on his balance, Jaebum knows how much corporate assassins make, he’s been through enough of their bank accounts. But he still doesn’t have to; like it or not, he stole those plans - and this is a weird thing to think - fair and square, he sold them. This isn’t how this business works, you don’t pay back the person you  _ stole  _ from.

“Because I owe you this much. More even, way more. Especially-” he winces, crossing his legs and folding his arms, a picture of reluctance- “especially an explanation.” Jaebum’s chest feels tight, beyond just the lingering muscle cramp.

“Then explain.” He says thickly, tongue feeling too big for his mouth. Jinyoung blinks a few times in surprise, like he was expecting to be thrown out or something, but he relaxes a touch and runs slightly trembling fingers through his hair.

“The plans, they weren’t- what either of us thought. They were codes. For a virus.” Jaebum frowns; all the information they’d gathered had said they were designs for a new range of missiles. Why would Ares Macrotechnology, a weapons manufacturer, be designing a virus? They don’t even have a computer systems branch. “It was- Ares planned to crash the matrix again and push the blame onto Renraku, Mitsuhama and NeoNET so they could launch new decks and corner the market. Which wouldn’t be as big a problem exactly but-” he grimaces, rubbing his temple- “this virus, it- I don’t really know the specifics but it would trigger a worldwide crash and in doing so- it has a subprogram that could- kill everyone jacked in, something about biofeedback. Ares wanted to kill the competition. Literally.” Jaebum’s blood runs cold.

“What?” He croaks in horror. Jinyoung sighs.

“I had a contact in Ares at the time and he told me all of this while you were extracting the data. They knew someone was in their system, they let you take it because they wanted to track who did. And-” he winces again, jaw clenching and unclenching- “had you not erased it from their system as you left, they would have initiated the crash immediately. I don’t think they anticipated that.” Oh. Wow. Good thing he did then. “But the code itself had a tracker implanted into it. As soon as you jacked out they’d know where you were.” Jinyoung finally looks at him; it hits Jaebum again just how tired he seems. The bags under his eyes have bags.

“If they told you this while I was extracting it, why the fuck didn’t you tell me any of this at the time?” He demands. Jinyoung looks physically pained now, looking down at his hands in his lap, eyelashes casting shadows onto his cheeks.

“If I had tried to tell you while you were jacked in, would you have listened to me? I messaged you six times just now and you ignored all of them.” Well that is a fair point actually. But still, if it was so important, he should have called and kept calling until he answered; if it’s annoying enough he would answer if just to tell whoever it was to fuck off. “I couldn’t guarantee getting through to you and even if I had, would you have stopped?” Jaebum’s instinct is to protest, to say that he would have done if that’s what Jinyoung thought best but he stops himself because, if he’s being honest, no, he wouldn’t have stopped. He’d still have stolen it. That job was months of work and nothing short of a gun to his head would have stopped him. Irritable that he’s been forced to acknowledge his own part in this shitshow, Jaebum snaps at him.

“I took it cloudless, they couldn’t have tracked it through that.” Jinyoung grimaces.

“The tracker told them the last place it was before storage and that was my apartment. My contact told me they were mobilising a cleaning crew as soon as the code was deleted. Lone Star, blacklisted team. They were there maybe half an hour after you left.” Jaebum’s hand goes limp and falls to his lap, feels blood start trickling slowly from his nose and down onto his lips. ICE is one thing, Lone Star blacklisters are another entirely. Whole teams made up of assassins as good as Jinyoung. Jaebum swallows hard, tasting iron and gingerly dabbing at his nose again, watching Jinyoung look away again. “So I took it and ran, opened the storage on the other side of Seoul to get their attention then got on a plane. I kept opening it in different cities to keep them tracking me, until I managed to talk to Renraku and sold it to them a few months later. They gave me a job, I didn’t ask for it. They assumed-” he breathes an unhappy laugh- “they assumed I killed whoever stole it to take it from them. I didn’t correct them.” Jaebum licks his lips, grimacing at the blood on his tongue.

“You sold a matrix breaker to  _ Renraku _ ? They’re not exactly altruistic, they won’t get rid of it-” Jinyoung scoffs but it doesn’t sound derisive, just tired and a little exasperated.

“I have no doubts that Renraku kept the code. But they have a vested interest in keeping the matrix operable and not killing everyone using it considering their business relies on having living customers.” Even so, this isn’t the sort of code to be left with megacorporations, they aren’t exactly known for being trustworthy or looking out for humanity as a whole. Jaebum cracks his stiff neck and wipes once more at his nose, tentatively lowering the bundle of tissues and waiting for more blood to fall; it doesn’t so he chucks the tissues into the bin next to the couch before rounding on Jinyoung again.

“If this stuff was so dangerous, why steal it from me then? If you were leaving anyway-” Jinyoung shakes his head, angling his face away again.

“I wasn’t.” He snaps. Heart thudding painfully, Jaebum glares at him. “I wasn’t leaving anyway, I left and I took the virus with me because if I hadn’t, they would have either come to my apartment and killed us both or tracked you down once you opened it again here.” He gestures around at the living room and Jaebum bristles.

“You’re a fucking moron, you know that?” He barks thickly, wiping at a slow trickle of blood dribbling from his nose - his blood pressure just shot through the roof. “Why the hell would you do this? It wasn’t your problem, I was the one who insisted on that run-” Jinyoung rolls his eyes to the ceiling before looking back down and glowering at him darkly.

“It became my problem the second it became yours,” he snaps, the ‘dumbass’ left unsaid but heavily implied, “you are a very good decker Jaebum, you always have been but you aren’t cut out for street work. They would have- they would have killed you. Easily.” He grimaces, pressing his lips together to stop them wobbling. “So I took it because I didn’t want you to get hurt and I left like-” he flinches and cringes on himself a little- “like that, so that you wouldn’t try and follow me.” He takes a breath, looking down and clasping his hands in his lap. Jaw locked and a void opening in his chest, Jaebum looks away too, forcing himself to calm down.

“Why didn’t you tell me? If you had I would have come with you, you know that right?” He asks when he knows he’s not going to yell or start crying. Visibly pained and possibly also trying not to cry, Jinyoung shakes his head, agitatedly unclasping his hands and tapping a disjointed rhythm onto his knee.

“It wasn’t something- I don’t mean to be dismissive but you’re just-” he shakes his head and sighs, scrubbing his face with both hands- “this isn’t what you’re good at. There wasn’t time and I- I barely kept ahead of them on my own, you- if you were with me-” He doesn’t need to finish the sentence; they would have been caught and killed. “I had to go. Alone.” Hands shaking, Jaebum stares up at the ceiling, eyes burning. 

“And you couldn’t tell me that.” He bites out; Jinyoung shakes his head slightly, a tiny little thing. “Why not? Did you just not trust me or something?” He snaps, the wound in his chest pulling a little wider. Jinyoung blanches and stares at him in horror.

“This wasn’t about trust-” Eyes wide, Jaebum barks a mirthless laugh.

“Then what was it about?” He finds himself halfway shouting. Something in Jinyoung snaps and he’s on his feet in a flash, pacing up and down with his fists clenched tight, tendons standing up on the back of his hands.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt!” He snaps; Jaebum stands too, goes to step in front of him so he stops pacing but he just starts yelling into his face. “I had a contact in Ares the entire time we were running that job and I  _ forgot  _ about him until he contacted me during your heist because he recognised my fucking address! I was distracted and fucking stupid and if you had  _ died _ because of that fucking virus or- or some blacklister it would have been  _ my fault _ !” He stops with a visible effort, closing his eyes and taking a step back to scrub both hands over his face. Jaebum reels somewhat, struggling to gather his wits back together.

“W- why were you so distracted then?” He manages to rasp. Jinyoung stiffens, eyes wide like he never intended to say that, then shakes his head.

“It doesn’t matter.” His voice is stark and cold but there’s a waver in his eyes, something almost pleading.

“Yes it does!” Jaebum snaps furiously; he’s so fucking sick of being jerked around like this. Jinyoung flinches and looks down.

“I…” Jinyoung gulps, biting at his trembling lips. “I was planning something else.” He doesn’t say anything more and Jaebum pinches the bridge of his nose; why must everything be like pulling teeth with him?

“What?” He hisses, beyond exhausted. Jinyoung’s shoulders slump but he lifts his head, eyes glossy but dull. His right hand pulls his tie loose and reaches into his shirt, pulling something out; a ring, plain platinum hanging off a silver chain.

“I was going to propose to you. When we took the holiday.” Wow, he must have lost more blood than he thought; that’s of course why Jaebum suddenly wobbles, lightheaded enough to almost fall over as he stares in disbelief at the light glinting off the metal. He’s not sure how it could be causing him to start tearing up but he’s still pretty sore, it must be that. God, he’s not even convincing in his own head.

“But you just left instead?” His voice shakes but doesn’t break. Jinyoung looks away, lips pressed into a wobbly line, the ring dropping from his hand to lie stark against his navy tie.

“I’d rather you live and hate me than see you die because I fucked up.” He mumbles miserably. Jaebum clenches his fists to stop his hands shaking and stares up at the cracked ceiling.

“Get out of my apartment.” He whispers it so his voice doesn’t crack. Jinyoung sucks in a deep breath, opens his mouth to say something but ultimately thinks better of it and nods, turning on his heel and heading for the door. Something of a mess inside, Jaebum wobbles back to the couch and plops down into it, wincing when the door shuts with a click and burying his face into his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof that smarts huh and congrats to everyone who guessed Jinyoung had a reason for leaving u were right and now probably kind of emo
> 
> yell at me down below or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles)


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is [monochrome - scandroid](https://youtu.be/oeF6tUQly4E) its good!! and kind of emo lol like this chapter so yeah give it a listen while u read!!

“That is one hell of a story.” Mark whistles, eyebrows almost hitting his hairline. Jaebum huffs a miserable laugh.

“I know. Unfortunately it checks out.” He'd combed through the thumb drive he left, plugged it into his old deck - it’s outdated, but still works enough to open files and isn’t connected to his new one, so it wouldn’t break anything important if there was anything malicious inside - and hadn’t believed what he’d been seeing: sixty thousand nuyen, for one thing, which he very much could have used over the last year, and other files; security footage ripped from cameras all over the world, showing Jinyoung in fifteen different cities; transcripts and recordings of conversations with Renraku over the sale and wiretaps from Ares about the mobilisation of the blacklisted teams and recovery of the “package”; excerpts of the virus’ code, elegant and terrifying and everything Jinyoung said it was.

“Well. Shit.” Mark sums it all up quite nicely. Jaebum grunts his agreement. “Are you going to finish the job?” Jaebum nods slowly; he doesn't have much choice in that regard considering he's signed a contract. Renraku owns his ass until he completes the business or dies trying. “Is Jinyoung?” This he doesn't know but knowing his luck, yes he is. 

“What do I do?” He mumbles, forehead in his hands. Mark sighs. 

“You do your job. And figure the rest out afterwards.” He makes it sound so easy, like Jaebum's understanding of the last year of his life hasn't been flipped on its head. 

“Right.” He lifts his head but doesn't look at Mark, staring off at the wall behind him. “I'll be heading to Neo-Tokyo at the end of the week. I probably won't have time to contact you.” He'll likely be very busy trying to figure out how to deal with upped security on the night of the gala to get Jinyoung to the design blueprints. As well as actually finding them before then.

“Alright. Be careful, okay? And not just with the job.” Mark's frown is worried but it softens when Jaebum smiles vaguely and nods. “I'm serious. Take care of yourself. I don't want to have to come over and watch stupid sappy dramas with you while you mope into a bucket of ice cream again-” Jaebum wilts, cheeks heating up- “so just, be careful. Don't get hurt.” He smiles slightly. Sheepish, Jaebum nods. 

“I'll try.” Mark's smile widens a bit.

“Okay. Talk soon.” Jaebum smiles back weakly.

“Bye.” Mark winks and the feed goes dark.

Jaebum rests his cool palms on his warm cheeks and sighs. What to do now. He contemplates jacking in and working more on the maze but his concentration is so shot at the moment he'd probably just get dumped out again. He could clean his apartment or something, but he already spent most of last night reshuffling his closet just to occupy his mind after he looked at what Jinyoung gave him. He won't be able to sleep and lying there awake won't help. He has all that money now so he could buy something, deck upgrades or something but it feels weird spending anything so soon; he can't shake the weird paranoid feeling that all of this is about to backfire horribly.

Groaning to himself, Jaebum flops back against the couch cushions and scrubs his eyes. He pushes down until he sees coloured spots behind his eyelids, then drops his hands and blinks blearily at the ceiling. Jinyoung did this to save his life. He fucked off for a year, stole from him and broke his heart so he wouldn’t get hurt. Did it not occur to him that this, what he did, hurt? That this way, that hurt is inescapably his fault? Jaebum doesn’t know how he feels about anything anymore; he’s glad he’s not dead, he can’t lie about that, but there had to have been a better way, where he could remain not dead and also not spent months of his life miserably questioning everything, every little detail from their life before, trying so hard to find the tipping point, to figure out what he’d done to make Jinyoung stop caring about him to the point he could just callously do this to him, whether it was his fault, if there had been anything he could have done to prevent it. Was there really no way to avoid that? And where the fuck do they go from here? Jaebum sighs and closes his eyes.

“Call Jinyoung.” He mumbles reluctantly. They need to clear this up even a little, if just so they can get this job done and part ways, even if Jaebum’s not entirely sure that’s what he wants anymore. There's a pause and then the line starts ringing. Barely two rings in, he answers.

“...hello?” He sounds nervous. Jaebum sits up. 

“We need to talk." Jaebum says briskly, flicking on the video feed and staring at the black panel. There's a brief hesitation, then it flickers to life, Jinyoung appearing in scratchy 240p before resolving clearer. He looks like he hasn't slept all night. Jaebum can relate. “Your explanation doesn't justify what you did.” He says without any buildup; Jinyoung doesn’t react beyond chewing on the inside of his cheek. “You're an asshole. Why the hell was breaking up with me and running away your go-to option?” Because this is the crux of the matter; Jaebum doesn't give a shit about the theft anymore really, that much at least makes sense and he's paid for it now, he just can't understand how Jinyoung went from planning a proposal to fucking off with barely a word. Jinyoung looks down, misery written in the slump of his shoulders.

“I don’t know. I just- I did what I thought I had to do. I couldn’t see any other options.” He mumbles. Jaebum breathes out slowly through his nose, massaging his forehead.

“Leaving a note and taking off while I was in the shower was the only option?” He snaps; Jinyoung shrinks in on himself a little more.

“I told you, I didn’t want you to try and follow me, you would have got hurt.” Right. Of course. Jaebum rubs his eyes, fuming and miserable.

“You’re such an idiot.” He barely whispers it, dropping his hands again to scowl at him. Jinyoung fidgets but sighs and lifts his head. He really does look tired.

“I know.” Well that’s something. “I’m so sorry. For leaving, for surprising you yesterday, for- for everything.” Jaebum bites at the corner of his lips, rubbing the edge of his jack twitchily. Jinyoung doesn’t say anything, just watches him sadly. 

“How could you think I would ever cheat on you?” He eventually asks; that really hurt, to hear that fucking baseless accusation as soon as he burst back into his life. What kind of person does he think Jaebum is? Jinyoung sighs again, face flushing ashamedly.

“I- didn't. Not really. I just-” Jinyoung fidgets, shifting in place- “it was a stupid and- arrogant assumption in the heat of the moment, I thought- it should’ve taken you longer to move on from me so you must have already been-” He winces, right hand twitching up to his collar before hastily dropping back down; Jaebum blanches when he realises he was going for the chain around his neck. “I know how stupid that sounds, I was just, I was furious and jealous and I wasn’t thinking clearly and you- I know you wouldn’t. I just wanted to lash out because you looked like you were moving on while I wasn’t.” He sighs, grimacing sadly. “I should never have done it, I’m really sorry about that too.” He keeps his head up even as he shrinks in on himself, wearily keeping eye contact. Jaebum’s jaw locks angrily and he forces himself to take a breath before answering.

“Right,” he bites out; he doesn’t miss how Jinyoung’s face falls when he says this and nothing else about it, “regardless. We still have to work together for now if your contract is anywhere as hard-assed as mine-” he nods once stiffly, but his attempt at pulling up a blank expression fails- “so all of this is getting put away for now. And if you ever break into my apartment without my permission again I will empty all of your bank accounts.” It’s not an empty threat and Jinyoung knows it. He nods again solemnly but his lips twitch ever so slightly despite himself; Jaebum sighs sharply. “The gala thing. I need a way in. Can you get Renraku to add me to their guest list?” His change of subject leaves something to be desired in terms of subtlety. Jinyoung looks startled, peering at him blankly.

“Why do you need to get in? Aren't you going in through the matrix?” Jaebum manages not to roll his eyes. Just.

“The gala will be happening in and out of the matrix, an invite will let me in past the first defences. It'll be easier.” This had occurred to him during the night while his exhausted mind had been jumping all over the place. Realisation flashes on Jinyoung's face and he quickly nods, a faint flush darkening his cheeks.

“I'll talk to management,” he says, sitting up a little straighter, “they shouldn't have a problem with it.” Jaebum nods.

“Alright. I'll- let you know what I find deeper in the maze.” Jinyoung nods too, quicker and more times than necessary. They just stare at each other for a long, painfully awkward moment before Jinyoung looks away and ends the call, the screen cutting to black.

 

Jaebum has come up with a plan. It might be a rather stupid plan, but it’s something; he’s going to crack into a sentry. Logically speaking it’s sound - all of the ICE units will have a map of the matrix version basement with the locations of major obstacles, hopefully some contents of some of the vaults down here and, with any luck, a copy of the actual physical layout of the lowest basement with the location of the cloudless storage holding the deck blueprints - but logistically it’s a bit trickier considering he does actually have to crack some ICE and the vast majority of the sentries in the lowest basement seems to be black ICE. Which means if this goes wrong he could die. Or just suffer non-fatal brain damage. Both are fun options. 

Either way, he’s not going to go for one that’s actually likely to kill him; thankfully lethal sentries are usually pretty easy to identify, what with the very large guns they tend to have mounted on their blocky metal bodies. Picking the difference between cerebropathic and psychotropic ICE is a little harder but is unfortunately equally important since the former would only knock him out, while the latter can be much harder to recover from considering they modify the brain to cause anything from recurring headaches and mood swings to cyberphobia. Developing a crippling fear of the matrix would really not be conducive to a successful job. 

Still, he’s ninety-five percent sure he’s found a regular non-lethal sentry, carefully following after it down the plain white corridor, fluorescent lights reflecting off chrome panels on the hulking form’s plating. Its patrol route is approaching a dead end, the corridor stopping at a room that Jaebum’s already scanned - it had a bomb on the door but nothing particularly interesting inside, just some bank details that Jaebum copied just to have - and he’s watched this sentry doing its rounds for the last twenty four minutes; it turns outside this room and comes back down the corridor to take the first left it comes to and, as luck would have it, it is the only active sentry in this corridor right now. Apparently Mitsuhama have more important things to protect than bank details.

The sentry is almost at its turning point; Jaebum pulls the gun from the holster on his thigh and levels it as he strides forwards a little quicker. It fires silently, three shots peppering the plate on its back, tiny metal discs sticking onto the surface and it seizes up, sparks bursting from its joints as it falls onto what could be described as its knees. Jaebum stows the gun away again and hurries around to its front - it’s expected in front of some cameras in eighty four seconds, so he needs to work quickly lest its absence be noted beyond statistical error. He pries a panel off its head, its many faceted eyes dim and opaque, and carefully picks through wires and circuits until he finds its core memory unit; he grabs the box, silver spreading from his hand to coat it as he downloads its contents. It doesn’t take long but each second inches him closer to getting caught so he’s feeling a little antsy.

There’s a ding in his head when the download is complete and he yanks his hand out, plugging back in what wires he had to disconnect and replaces the panel, pressing a palm to it to seal it back on then walking away back down the corridor, eyeing the sentry warily until he’s far enough away to bring it back online with a snap of violet-gloved fingers. The discs fall to the ground and shatter into pixels and the hulking shape shifts with a series of clunks. Jaebum doesn’t stick around to watch, turning on his heel and running back the way he came; as he goes he flicks open a panel to the left of his head to look through the data he’s picked up. It scrolls through faster than his eyes can track but he has a program combing for anything relevant. For now, he’ll focus on heading for the exit and dodging all of the other ICE in the maze.

One close shave with a deck-killer later - it was clearly modded to hell, not coming up in Jaebum’s proximity alerts until it was in  _ very  _ close proximity but thankfully there was a safe door through which he could duck to hide - Jaebum emerges from the lowest basement into the stairwell. It’s a decently safe place to emergency exit which  _ isn’t  _ really the safest way of getting out since it carries a non-zero risk of dumping out accidentally during the transit, but he’s only got a couple of days before he has to go to Neo-Tokyo, so he’s not exactly replete with time right now and it takes half an hour to get out from here, longer if the elevator is in legitimate use for too long and he has to climb out manually. So, he draws a shimmering window in the air and steps through it, immediately swiping it shut behind him and severing the connection; nothing happens in the split-second transition into the simulated streets of central London, so Jaebum thinks he’s in the clear. 

From here he bounces between a few cities - Chicago, Beijing, Moscow, Taipei - using actual datastreams this time, just to confuse the signal a little should there have been any attempt to track him before he cut off from Mitsuhama’s network, before pinging back to his own hub and jacking out. It’s only after dumpshock that he really appreciates just how nice jacking out properly is, how pleasant it is to be able to use one’s muscles immediately and do things like speak and breathe. 

“Open the memory.” He says aloud into his empty living room, throat a little raspy but actually working. The screen projects a table of contents in front of him, a series of soft dings in his ear indicating points of interest with the corresponding entries highlighting in neon pink. “Keyword map.” Seven of the pink highlights turn green. “Fourth basement.” The third and sixth green tags pulse then open side by side, the left showing a similar maze to the one Jaebum found by scanning the floor and the right a much less complicated version. It's to this one he turns first and almost punches the air; it is a physical map, showing the entirety of the fourth basement’s layout. It's really not that big, just a few corridors and a series of labs and storerooms with one larger one right at the back with several secure lockers and a bigger vault. Jaebum would bet his deck that the blueprints are in one of those. 

Which is where the second map comes in; now he can connect the defences, override controls and more importantly contents to their corresponding vault, which means he can open the right door when Jinyoung gets to the basement. Or worst case scenario pop all of them and figure it out from there. Either way, it’s a good place to be in terms of prep, even if he now has to spend hours poring over these maps and then go back in to double check all the ICE between the entrance and the vault they want but he can do the latter when he’s in Neo-Tokyo if he has to. All in all, time to get cracking.

 

It’s about four hours before his flight to Neo-Tokyo by the time he’s done picking through the mess of ICE and other defences to link up the maps but he’s managed to figure out which control hubs govern which physical vaults, so he won’t have to figure it out on the fly mid-heist. He’s also updated his route in, avoiding a couple more corridors without floors - dumping out during the job would be very bad - and shortening it in general so he can run a little bit ahead of Jinyoung by the time he gets down this far to let him through without unnecessary delays.

Jinyoung’s been almost silent since their call, acknowledging any progress reports but barely anything else. Not that he needs to do any more than that, but it’s still a little weird that he doesn’t voluntarily check up on his progress. Jaebum doesn’t know how he feels about it, even if he was the one who asked for them to stay professional this time. His more pressing if slightly ridiculous issue is that he doesn’t know if Jinyoung’s getting the same flight as him to Neo-Tokyo and if they are, whether they’re sat together. It’s such a trivial thing to worry about but it’s been preying on his mind for the last two days since the possibility occurred to him and it would be easy to find out, he could just  _ ask _ after all but what if he’s not and then he thinks that Jaebum  _ wants _ him to, but then what if he  _ is  _ and then thinks Jaebum  _ doesn’t  _ want him to; Jaebum doesn’t even fucking know which would be better or even which of the two is true but the unknowns of it have him balking every time he’s about to message him to find out and that in itself has him feeling even stupider. He’s coming to the conclusion that he might be a bit of a moron.

Still, he muses glumly as he packs both of his decks into a scanner and x-ray proof box and buries it in clothes in his suitcase, could be worse he supposes. He could be dead. That would definitely be worse. There are probably things between that and his frosty situation with his ex, but he can’t think of any off the top of his head. He’ll blame that on the sleep deprivation. Sighing, he taps at his cuff, flicking upwards to throw both of his fake SINs up onto the screen over the table, scanning quickly through them to memorise his apparent names and numbers. Jinyoung had sent the first to him yesterday, apparently the system identification number of the employee he’ll be impersonating to get into Mitsuhama on the night of the gala - apparently this guy works in one of Renraku’s Spanish branches so he has to appear to be jacking in from Madrid - while the second is one he bought a couple of years ago, one of a couple he has in case he has to travel. He just has to make sure to flash customs the right one later. Jaebum zips his suitcase shut and pulls it off his bed, dragging it behind him. One of the wheels is broken, making a horrible scratching sound against the fake-wood flooring.

“Order a cab, here to Incheon International.” He says aloud, a soft ding of affirmation sounding in his ear. A light on his cuff flashes, “four minutes away” sounding in his ear in a tinny synthesised voice. Humming, Jaebum picks his suitcase up and heads for the door - everything's shut down and it'll lock automatically behind him so there's nothing to worry about there - it slides shut behind him and he trudges to the elevator, rolling his eyes to the ceiling in despair as it creeps its way up from the second floor. Probably would have been quicker to take the stairs at this rate, but eventually it arrives at his floor, the doors sliding open with an unnerving creak.

The ride down is just as long, Jaebum glowering at the floor counter the entire time, but eventually he reaches the bottom and jogs out into the street. It's pouring rain, almost drenching him in the minute it takes him to cross the road and shove his suitcase into the back of the taxi. The driver doesn't acknowledge him beyond cursorily checking his apparent SIN, the car humming to life then going almost silent and practically gliding down the street, the loudest noise the squeak of the wipers against the windscreen. Propping his chin on his palm, Jaebum stares out the window, drops of water on the plexiglass giving the neon signs halos, pinks and blues and yellows blending together, stark against the dark skies. The surface fogs up as he watches, everything blurred and ghostly. Unreal almost. Jaebum closes his eyes.

 

With a huff, Jaebum settles into a seat in the waiting room, holding his soykaf between his palms to warm his hands up. Even at so early in the morning, the terminal is busy, mostly suits but a couple of families here and there, all of them tired. Jaebum sips the drink and grimaces; he's only had real coffee once or twice, but he can no longer enjoy the watery tastelessness of its cheap replacement. It's warm and has sugar and caffeine in it though, so he'll manage. 

Someone sits down next to him. He doesn't look, just keeps staring out over the terminal. They stay silent too, at least for a little while.

“Terrible weather huh?” Jinyoung murmurs. Jaebum bites the inside of his cheek on an amused smile threatening to break over his face despite himself and shrugs.

“It's not great.” He replies just as nonchalantly, though it sounds a little forced even to him. This is weirdly familiar - they often did stuff like this before, generally if they had to travel anywhere for business and didn’t know if they could be seen together before the job lest someone get suspicious, pretending not to know each other, chatting inanely like strangers then parting ways. It was dumb and childish and fun and doing it here brings up all that warmth again, that comfortable feeling of routine and normalcy which shouldn't be there in the least on this job. Jaebum feels less uncomfortable at that realisation than he thought he would, even though he’s not really sure why he’s playing along. He tells himself it’s just easier than making a scene but what else is even easier than that? Not saying anything. 

“Where are you heading?” Jinyoung asks, polite as anything. Jaebum shuffles a little lower in his seat and lifts his cup to his lips, resting it against them without drinking.

“Neo-Tokyo,” he mumbles; Jinyoung hums an acknowledgement, “you?” There's a beat of silence, like Jinyoung's surprised he's still participating. So is Jaebum if he's being honest.

“The same for me.” He says quietly. Jaebum risks a glance over at him; he looks annoyingly put-together for one in the morning, suit sharp and creaseless, hair perfectly coiffed and not a dark circle in sight. Jaebum shifts slightly awkwardly and looks away again, suddenly very conscious of his jeans, ratty jacket and general look of someone who’s slept for less than six hours in the last two days. 

“You a corp or something?” He asks to fill the silence, taking a sip of his soykaf and managing not to grimace this time. There's a soft laugh next to him.

“Or something-” show off- “I have a big opportunity coming up.” He pauses, looking out onto the dark and rainy runway through the scuffed plastic windows across the terminal when Jaebum glances at him. “I just- need to navigate around my co-worker.” Oh. Jaebum snaps his eyes away again, focussing in on the gaudy floral pattern on some woman's shoes for something to look at. “They're- a handful. With good reason to be. And I don't want to step out of line again, so I'm a little nervous.” Jaebum takes a deep breath and lets it back out slowly, pursing his lips against the lid of the cup. 

“Don't sell yourself short.” He finds himself muttering before he can talk himself out of it, quiet enough to be almost lost into the plastic. “I'm sure you can handle it.” Jinyoung's silent for a long few seconds, even his quiet breathing coming to a stop.

“I'll do my best.” He sounds like he's smiling. Jaebum doesn't dare check. “Wh-”

“First class passengers for flight PA 2703 to Narita International, please make your way to terminal five.” Blares out in robotic monotone over the tannoy; Jaebum sighs. His flight, not his seats. Jinyoung however, stands up.

“Excuse me.” He murmurs. Jaebum scoffs. 

“Nice for some.” Why couldn't he get first class tickets too? What he can see of Jinyoung's lips twitches and he presses them together as he turns, clearly holding back a smile. Jaebum hides his own behind his cup and watches him walk away, his shiny black shoes clicking on the tiles, and tentatively prods at the warm feeling blooming in his chest.

It's not that long a wait before the rest of the flight is called; while they might not be as nice as first class, the economy seats could be a lot worse; all of the children are far away from Jaebum and his legs aren't being crushed by the seat in front of him, so that’s good. He quite likes flying, better than cars or the subway. It's kind of freeing, being able to look out the window and see so far, a little like being in the matrix and having access to everything. 

The plane shudders to life and starts to move, rolling down the runway and picking up speed. Jaebum settles back into his chair and stares out the window, watching the rain stream down it and the blurring lights of the terminal and the city beyond as they lift into the sky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! if u have things to say hmu below in the comments or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles) I wanna know your thoughts!! <3 things are starting to get spicy huh we're finally off to neo-tokyo!!


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the delay and pls read the notes at the end once ur done with the chapter,,, anyway the song for this chapter is [neo-tokyo by scandroid](https://youtu.be/mSEUpJIg52U) bc of course it is and its real good and fits well!! enjoy!!

Neo-Tokyo is exactly as Jaebum remembers it from the last time he was here. It's busy, it's loud and it has two sides to it; there's the pretty side, the one with all of the megacorporations and their fancy sovereign buildings, the skyscrapers and the galas and the corporate types, and then there's the other side. The business side, deckers and street samurai and murders and thefts, prostitutes with cyberware, yakuza with stone faces and hustlers with slick smiles and seventeen SINs, all of them for sale at a pinch. It's on this side that Jaebum finds his hotel. 

It could be worse, he muses, staring at the bullet holes hastily plastered over and repainted on the far wall opposite the double bed, he's stayed in shadier places. This kind of place is a bit ugly but discreet and secure; no one's going to be checking in this room until the deposit on it runs out even if someone starts screaming bloody murder and Jaebum's already looked over the locks on the door and the tiny window and come away pretty satisfied. Stretching his back out, he gets unpacking, carefully removing his good deck from its box - the old one can stay in there, he'll use that for cracking the cloudless storage should they successfully extract it - and checking the housing for cracks - one of the first times he flew with one it ended up broken in transit, so now he's a little paranoid. Everything seems to be in order though; Jaebum clears one of the bedside tables and unplugs the lamp to replace it with the deck, watching the LEDs on the side light up and flash as it boots itself up and reconnects to the matrix. 

With nothing to do but wait for it to be ready, Jaebum flops onto the bed and heaves a long sigh. It's not very comfortable and the ceiling is webbed with cracks. It'll do for a week though.

There's a ding in his ear, insistent and repetitive. Jaebum shuts his eyes.

“Hello?” He answers the call, cuffed wrist with the microphone up next to his head on the threadbare pillow. Jinyoung's voice sounds directly into his ear.

“Found the place?” He asks briskly. 

“Yeah. Bit shit but I've been in worse.” They both have. Together in fact. He's not going to say that though, even if he's sure Jinyoung's thinking about the same thing. 

“We need to discuss details once you're finished preparing." Jaebum nods at nothing.

“I'll be a couple of days, I'll let you know when I'm done on my end.” 

“Alright. Keep me updated.” And he hangs up. Jaebum sighs again. Even in Japan no one says goodbye to him. Grumpy, he sits back up, glowering at his still booting deck before standing back up. It’ll be another half hour before he can get any meaningful work done, he might as well get something to eat. He’s also close to a subway station so he can get deeper into the city, go and take a look at the Mitsuhama building in person. Might as well go see where Jinyoung’s going so he can be glad he doesn’t have to join him, physically at least. 

The elevator in this place isn’t much better than the one in Jaebum’s own building, creaking and protesting as soon as he steps inside. It’s a bit quicker though, so he’s soon walking past the scuffed and currently unmanned receptionist’s desk and out the front door. It’s not that cold but the wind bites at any exposed skin; Jaebum flips his collar up and folds his arms, heading for the subway station down the street. 

Even now at barely five in morning it’s pretty busy, people bustling down the grey concrete steps and scanning through turnstiles in a constant flow; the city never sleeps, Jaebum supposes. He joins the stream, passing his cuff over the scanner - at least Renraku forked out for a subway pass - then heading for the train that’ll take him to Shibuya.

It’s not as packed as it would be during the day at least, even if Jaebum’s still fairly squashed against the door when he gets on. It’s not a particularly long journey, something Jaebum’s thankful for as more people get on than off the closer they get to Shibuya and it starts to get uncomfortably busy. Luckily his position means Jaebum’s one of the first off the train when they reach the station and he gladly leaves the platform, jogging up the steps to emerge into the early morning air. It’s not that fresh, clogged with exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke where he’s stood between the taxi rank and the smokers’ area, but dawn is just starting to turn the sky grey where it’s not drowned out by flashing lights. Jaebum fishes his mask out from his pocket, puts it on and heads down the street. 

There are a couple of megacorp sovereignties in Shibuya; Ares, NeoNET and Shiawase all have presences here, but Mitsuhama’s is by far the most extravagant - Renraku also has their headquarters in Neo-Tokyo, just in Chiba rather than Shibuya. Jaebum stares up at the skyscrapers clustered together, neon reflecting off the lower windows while the upper one hundred floors currently show a series of adverts, cycling through Mitsuhama’s range of products noiselessly. Wandering past slowly, Jaebum taps at his cuff, narrowing his eyes at the holograms; he gets a couple of seconds of rapid-fire Japanese before the Korean translation kicks in and he can hear all the music and shoutcasting that would accompany the adverts in his ear. He switches it off when it starts getting annoying - almost instantly - and shoves his hands into his pockets, strolling past the front gates into the courtyard surrounding the buildings. The walls are high and topped with electric razor-wire, several not-so-subtly armed guards patrolling along the exterior and manning the gates, one lounging back in a control booth next to the barrier blocking the road in. 

Jaebum’s very glad he doesn’t have to get in there in person. 

 

It's becoming routine by now, cracking into Mitsuhama’s most secure data. Jaebum's kind of impressed with himself; maybe he deserves to be on Renraku’s files as one of the best - note to self, erase those files once this job is done. His new path in really is quicker too, on par with how fast Jinyoung will hopefully be moving through the building taking any guards into consideration, so that bodes well for their success; it’s never good to be waiting for someone to catch up on either end. 

A blue dot tracing his path through the image of the maze projected in front of him, Jaebum jogs along bleached white corridors and hides around corners for ICE to pass, cautiously making his way deeper. The sentries certainly becomes more numerous the closer he gets to the vaults, patrolling in twos and threes twice as often but they patrol fixed routes, routes he now knows courtesy of the ICE he cracked, so it’s not too hard to wait it out between shifts; the issue will come during the actual heist since it’s probable that the rotas will change and increase in frequency, but Jaebum’s good at adapting on the fly, it’ll be fine. 

Ducking around a pair of lethal sentries, Jaebum finally comes face to face with the vault entrance. He’s brought up short quite far away, his scanner going haywire at the alarms wired across the floor and door, another bomb set into the centre but the former are easy enough to deal with; Jaebum crouches, pressing a white gloved hand to the very base of the wall and watching silver bleed along the white surface and along the very edge of the door frame, the red hot lines of the triggers highlighted by the scanner winking out as they’re deactivated. When the last one switches off, Jaebum straightens up and approaches the door, already taking the brackets from his pocket and fixing them to the wall.

It really is something that he’s no longer stressed about defusing a bomb, isn’t it, he muses absently as he does just that, plucking the last wire from its housing and watching the module switch itself off. Cautiously - he’s confident, not stupid - he holds a hand up the door and feeds his tiny camera underneath when he’s sure nothing untoward will happen.

The room beyond is, Jaebum suspects, a perfect mirror of the actual vault room. Or, almost perfect anyway, he’s pretty sure there aren’t large gun turrets flanking the far wall though knowing Mitsuhama, that’s not beyond the realms of possibility. It’s pretty big, but not outlandishly so, rows of rooms lining either side and closed off with metal grates, but the centrepiece is obviously the large durasteel vault taking up the opposite wall, this being what the turrets are clearly guarding. Now the big question is which room are the deck plans in? He’s pretty sure it won’t be the big vault, that’s for something way bigger than a new deck design, but they’re definitely in one of the side rooms. Unfortunately he’s in no way ready to go in there just yet; he has what he needs to take out those turrets, the programs just aren’t preloaded onto his deck right now. It does mean he can’t get a look at the locks on the doors, but he knows all the common and a lot of the uncommon defenses like the back of his hand by now, so he shouldn’t have a problem with it. Though maybe…

Frowning internally, Jaebum crouches down, zooming the camera into the nearest grate door and focussing on the control panel next to it. It looks familiar, the layout very similar to several he’s seen before. It’s not the definite confirmation of his ability to get through it that he would have liked but it’ll be cutting it a little fine if he tries to get back down here again before the gala considering its in three days and it’s best not to try and get in at least a day before the actual heist; coming back in means possibility of mistakes and any mistake could put Mitsuhama on high alert and getting in during the gala then would be nigh impossible. No, it looks like he’s going to have to trust himself to figure that out on the night, which is disconcerting; planning keeps deckers alive, so not being able to plan everything is uncomfortable. But, well, he’s dealt with worse. It’ll be fine. Probably.

 

Jaebum paces up and down his room, glancing anxiously between the door and window; Jinyoung’s late. Only by seven minutes - and counting - but he’s still late and late is never good in regards to these things. Well, they aren’t currently doing the heist, so it’s not like it’s compromising the job or anything but still, Jaebum can’t help worrying; Jinyoung’s a corp now, maybe he’s on the receiving end of the cleaning this time. Scratching the edge of his datajack, Jaebum tries not to think about that possibility. Of course, the act of trying not to think about it just keeps bringing it to the forefront of his mind and he probably ends up dwelling on it more in fact. There’s also no point in pretending he doesn’t know why he’s so worried, he knows full well why even if he should know better than to feel this way anymore-

Two sharp raps on the door startle him out of his theoretical panic and he almost trips over his own feet in his haste to reach the peephole. He breathes a private sigh of relief to see Jinyoung in one piece with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his long coat, a black mask over his mouth and nose and his hood pulled down, hair tousled and damp on his forehead; it’s raining outside, has been for hours. Jaebum slides the deadbolt across and pulls the door open, stepping aside for Jinyoung to enter.

“Thanks.” He mutters as he slips inside. Jaebum doesn’t answer, just locks the door back up and gestures him into the room. He’s almost too nervous to turn around, surreptitiously wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans - he didn’t want to receive Jinyoung in sweatpants, dumb as it might be - but it doesn’t matter because Jinyoung isn’t looking at him, instead examining the maps that Jaebum’s deck is projecting onto the wall. “This is where the plans are?” He points at the highlighted room in the bottom basement, finger casting a shadow on the map.

“Yeah, that’s the vault room.” Jaebum answers, padding over to stand next to him. “I found my way down there and I think I’ve seen the security they have in there before, I should be able to get in.” Jinyoung nods, plucking at the buttons on his coat and shrugging it off to reveal a crisp white shirt and another navy tie. Must have just come from a meeting or something; he has to keep up appearances Jaebum supposes.

“How long should it take us to get down to the basement from the courtyard?” He asks, chucking the coat onto the floor next to the wall; Jaebum winces. It looks expensive, like worth more than his whole deck expensive. Well, at least one thing - Jinyoung’s inability to put things away neatly - hasn’t changed.

“I’ll get you an elevator, so not that long. Assuming everything goes well we could be in and out in less than an hour.” Jinyoung nods, unhooking his mask and stuffing it into the pocket of his slacks. Jaebum keeps eyeing his coat. “I’ve had a look through the CCTV cameras in the building, there aren’t any in the lowest basement-” it’s fairly common practice; if there’s no footage of something happening or something being there, there’s no evidence- “so you’ll need to wear a camera so I know what’s going on your end.” Jinyoung nods again.

“Shouldn’t be a problem, I have to wear one whenever I go to something like this, it’s standard practice for megacorporations.” He rattles off, hands tucked into his pockets as he looks over the map critically with hard eyes. He looks every bit the corporate assassin right now and Jaebum shifts a little awkwardly next to him; the gap between them now feels wider than ever despite how physically close they are. Even his face looks different, hollow and tired. He’s lost weight he really didn’t need to lose. 

“There are a lot of armed guards in the top basements, so I assume the trend continues downstairs,” Jaebum says automatically, reciting it on autopilot while the majority of his brain is caught up with relearning Jinyoung’s face, “but you won’t be able to get a weapon in, so you’ll need to be careful.” Jinyoung smiles tightly but doesn’t look away from the maps. 

“The benefit of working for a corporation is that they have a lot more money to throw at stuff like this-” he finally looks at Jaebum, an unreadable expression on his face- “I’ve got weapons sorted. Is everything else ready on your end?” He asks, head tilting slightly. Jaebum lifts a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.

“As ready as I can be on three weeks’ notice.” He mutters. One corner of Jinyoung’s mouth lifts into a rueful smile and he looks away again.

“I’ll tell you when to start, I’ve been looking over shift changes and personnel, but once we begin I’ll follow your lead,” he says quietly, shoulders hunching slightly, “you know the place better than me by now.” Jaebum rocks back on his heels.

“Alright.” His voice gives out somewhat, barely coming out louder than a whisper. Jinyoung scuffs his heel against the worn carpeting.

“When we’re done, there will be a car waiting for you outside. It’ll bring you to a secure, neutral location where you’ll have to extract the plans from the storage, then Renraku will take it and you’ll get paid.” And it’ll be over. Jaebum stares at Jinyoung’s coat crumpled on the floor. It really is a nice coat and it really is a terrible place for it to be. 

Jaebum doesn’t want this to be over. The realisation slams into him and he almost sways in place like it was a physical blow. He doesn’t want Jinyoung to go again, the thought has a hollow opening up in his chest and the fact that it does just pisses him off all over again; even if Jinyoung regrets what he did and explained and apologised, he still  _ did  _ it, he still lied and ran away and tore Jaebum’s heart out like it didn’t even matter, how can he be over it already? He’s angry that he’s  _ not  _ angry anymore, that his subconscious has started to forgive him without his conscious mind’s consent even if he’s definitely more than wary now; there’s nothing to say he won’t do it again, even if he’s remorseful about it. Honestly, Jaebum can’t even believe himself right now, how did he lose track of his own feelings so badly-?

“Are you okay?” Interrupts his spiralling thoughts; Jinyoung’s peering at him anxiously, a worried frown creasing his forehead and pushing his lips into something of a pout. Jaebum wants to slap himself at how much he wants to kiss him right now.

“Fine.” Jaebum mumbles, looking away and rubbing the edge of his jack again. “Anything else you want to know?” He can feel Jinyoung watching his hand and drops it again, wishing he didn’t fidget when he’s nervous. Even now Jinyoung knows him too well, it’s infuriating.

“Not off the top of my head. I’ll let you know if there’s anything else I think of.” He replies quietly. Restless, Jaebum nods, then curses himself when he realises he’s once again unconsciously fidgeting with his jack. He looks away, glaring out the tiny window and shoving his hands into his pockets. “Are you sure you’re alright?” Jaebum’s first instinct is to snap back and tell him to fuck off but he doesn’t. He does the opposite in fact.

“You want a drink?” He barks, turning on his heel and stomping to the tiny mini-fridge in the corner - he picked up beers on his way back from Shibuya and could really use one right now. There’s a choked splutter from behind him and Jinyoung’s snapping his mouth shut where he was gaping by the time Jaebum turns around and holds a can out towards him. He stares at Jaebum like he’s lost his mind for a good thirty seconds - honestly Jaebum’s wondering the same thing, he has no idea what he’s doing or why - but automatically takes it when Jaebum rolls his eyes and presses it into his chest on his way over to the window. It’s still pouring outside, he notes vaguely as he props himself against the sill, the edge of it digging a little uncomfortably into his hip but not enough for him to move away.

“Th-thanks.” Jinyoung stutters. Jaebum ignores him, pops the can open and gulps from it; it’s nasty, but it’ll do. There’s a pop and a hiss behind him too; Jaebum just stares out the window, head falling to rest against the corner of the wall. He’s fairly high up in this building but all of the others around it are the same height and dripping in faulty neon so any possible view between any is blurred out by light pollution and the downpour. Jaebum looks lower, watching a few stragglers with dark umbrellas jog down the narrow street, their splashes catching the multicoloured lights. “Why- I thought you wanted this to stay- stay professional.” Jinyoung asks, clearly baffled. Jaebum snorts softly. 

“It’s just a drink. And besides, when have I ever been any good at that?” He retorts, maybe a little defensively. Jinyoung backs down almost tangibly, breathing a quiet laugh then lapsing back into silence, punctuated by occasional taps against the can he’s holding. Jaebum lets his eyes shut and sighs. 

After a minute and a half of nothing, Jinyoung clears his throat.

“Are you, um-” he stops when Jaebum turns his head slightly to show he’s listening, seeming to reconsider his question and sighing again- “n-never mind.” He mumbles. Jaebum doesn’t look away from the street outside, watching the rain lash against the plexiglass.

“Just ask.” He murmurs. He has a sneaking suspicion as to what his question is and wants to know if he’s right.

“No, it’s- it doesn’t matter, it’s-” Jaebum can almost hear him wincing- “inappropriate.” Jaebum resists the urge to smack his head against the window.

“Just ask.” He repeats slowly; some things never change, Jinyoung’s always been nosy as hell and Jaebum can practically feel the waves of it coming off of him. He watches his reflection fidget on the glass, fingers drumming against the can in his hand and playing with the knot of his tie. 

“Are you still… seeing- the guy? You were seeing?” He asks stiffly, clearly regretting ever bringing it up. Jaebum was right; he bites hard on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smirking even though he’s not fully sure why he has the urge to do so. Well, that’s a lie, he knows exactly why, but either way:

“No.” He answers, forcing his voice to stay steady. He’d barely even been seeing him honestly, they’d only been on a handful of dates and hooked up a couple of times and Jaebum hadn’t seen it going any further than that. Not a massive loss but he watches Jinyoung’s expression tighten so he clearly thinks it’s worse than it is.

“Oh,” he mumbles, “I’m- sorry. I really hope I- didn’t have anything to do with-” 

“You did,” Jaebum cuts him off quietly, looking back over his shoulder at him; Jinyoung looks stricken, guilty relief passing over his face before he can school his expression into anything neutral, “but you probably would have done had you not come back at all.” Jaebum looks away at his own reluctant admission, chewing on the inside of his lip anxiously and glaring at his mostly full beer; they definitely aren’t drunk enough for this or even drunk at all. Why did he say that? Jinyoung doesn’t say anything, apparently struck dumb this time as he just blinks at Jaebum, eyes wide and round. Jaebum sighs, scratches the back of his neck and takes another gulp of beer.

“I’m sorry.” Jinyoung whispers, looking away out the window when Jaebum lifts his head again. His hand is trembling when he brushes a lock of hair off his forehead. Nodding, Jaebum hums and turns back to the window. He sees Jinyoung’s gaze snap to the back of his head in the reflection, eyes even wider. It’s cute. He’s still cute, even now he’s a corporate assassin. It’s quite a feat really. Jaebum really wishes he was drunk so he could justify his stupid rambling thoughts but no, he’s just that much of an idiot apparently. 

“Why did you even take this job?” He asks irritably, glowering at a neon sign that seems to be sputtering out in some shop window. “You’re a big-shot now, you could have got out of it if you’d wanted to.” There’s a tentative footstep behind him, then another and another until Jinyoung’s stood on the other side of the window frame. He sips on his beer and grimaces; Jaebum bites back another smile and kicks himself internally. 

“I could have,” he says slowly, like he’s searching for the right phrasing, “but I decided not to.” He smiles wanly at Jaebum’s questioning side-eye, not even pretending to be looking out of the window. “Honestly it was mostly because I wanted- I don’t know. I was pissed off and wanted you to also be pissed off about having to work with me.” His chin dips when Jaebum snorts. “I know it was childish, you don’t have to tell me.” He mumbles. Jaebum shakes his head.

“You think I didn’t accept partially for the same reason?” He asks dryly, drinking some more terrible beer. Jinyoung presses his lips together and looks out the window, fiddling with his tie again and loosening it a little. “I mean it was mostly the money but…” He tails off. There was definitely pettiness fueling his decision, at the very least to look at the job in the first place. Jinyoung nods sagely. 

“They are offering a lot of money.” He muses. Jaebum hums and raises his can in a half-hearted toast. 

“Can’t imagine you need it nowadays.” His grumble might be a little envious. Jinyoung inclines his head.

“Not really.” He mumbles, turning a little red like that’s something to be embarrassed about. Jaebum can’t help his smile this time and it makes Jinyoung’s blush get worse; he huffs and hides his pout behind his beer. “Trust me, the money is not worth the bullshit.” He mutters darkly; Jaebum tries to choke down a giggle. “I’m serious,” he whines, which of course doesn’t help, “they keep making me go to meetings, I have to sign so many- stop laughing at me!” He’s laughing too now, flustered but smiling.

“You poor thing.” Jaebum manages to say, having to look away and bite on his lip to stop his laughter. Jinyoung huffs, trying to look offended but he just looks happy, smiling out of the window and leaning his head against the corner of the wall when Jaebum risks another glance. Steeling himself inside, Jaebum bites the bullet and asks. “Why did it take you so long to come back?” His smile fades abruptly. Jaebum just waits, looking out the window again.

“It… took me four months to sell the data and- figure out where I stood with Renraku,” he says quietly, each word slow and measured, “then they shipped me out to Chicago for a while, undercover business. I wanted- to come back then. I sent the messages from there-” Jaebum shuts his eyes, wishing not for the first time he’d just decrypted them instead of deleting them once he’d traced the sender, “but when you didn’t respond, I figured… I don’t know. That my plan had worked too well, that we really were over.” His voice sounds a little thick but Jaebum doesn’t open his eyes again, biting hard on the inside of his cheek.

“Then why come back at all?” Jaebum asks, by now just exhausted. Jinyoung audibly sighs.

“I just- I missed you. And I felt awful about- about everything. And I meant to explain and apologise then but- your- you weren’t on your own. And I just- flipped out I guess.” He falls silent again. With a deep breath, Jaebum looks over at him; his head is bowed, shoulders hunched over a little bit and he’s got the ring between his finger and thumb, running it back and forth along the chain. He looks small and beaten down and it hurts deep in the pit of Jaebum’s chest to see him like that.

“I missed you too. Even after everything.” He admits quietly, trying not to shrink away when Jinyoung's head snaps up. Gaze fixed on the building opposite but not really seeing it, Jaebum sighs. “I-” his voice sticks in his throat and he has to pause, swallow down the burning feeling at the back of it before trying again- “I miss you.” He whispers, gripping the can hard enough the aluminium distorts. Jinyoung gasps next to him, strangled and hushed like he’s trying to keep it quiet. “Why couldn’t you just tell me what was going on?” Jaebum’s actually pretty surprised he just sounds exhausted rather than sad. Jinyoung hiccoughs and sniffles but Jaebum doesn’t look at him.

“I’m sorry.” He says thickly. Jaebum nods slowly, one corner of his mouth twitching up into a tiny wry smile.

“I know you are.” And he wants so badly to let himself believe it but that defensive and betrayed corner of his head won’t let him, not fully. Not yet. “You should- probably go. We both need to sleep, we’ve got a heist tomorrow night.” Jaebum murmurs, setting the still mostly full can onto the windowsill. Jinyoung’s splutter is stunned and a little hurt, but he clears his throat and answers evenly if still a little tearful.

“Alright. I’ll- coordinate with you before I leave for the gala.” Jaebum nods again, turning his head to look over at him; he’s looking away now, clearing his throat and smoothing down his shirt. 

“Will you be okay getting home?” He finds himself blurting without even thinking about it; he knows just how stupid a question that is even before Jinyoung barks a shocked laugh, glossy eyes wide as he looks over at him.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.” He says when he’s recovered, offering Jaebum a weak if amused smile before ducking to grab his jacket from the floor. Sighing at himself - of course the professional assassin will be fine getting home, it’s everyone else who should probably be worried - Jaebum shoves his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels as Jinyoung does his jacket buttons up. 

“Be careful anyway.” He mumbles, feeling his face warm up when Jinyoung hides a small smile and nods.

“Goodnight.” He murmurs as he heads for the door. Jaebum watches him leave, a weird feeling he can’t quite name sitting heavily in his chest.

“Goodnight Jinyoung.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys hope u enjoyed the chapter after the extra week of waiting,,,,, unfortunately its likely that that's gonna happen some more bc I have reached the end of the chapters ive finished writing and I have literally no time to write in the week... so it's probably going to take a while to get the next chapters out so please be patient with me :( sorry friendos 
> 
> that being said, you're always welcome to come yell at me either down in the comments or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles) in fact I welcome it I need some distractions from the endless stress of labwork;;;; thanks everyone!!! ilu <3


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey friends this chapter's on time!! and we're departing from our regularly scheduled scandroid in favour of a whole album by blue stahli [antisleep vol. 4](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVCQmfQyFfPuPGRLvjf0nqSjeEi2R5oFD) but if u only want one song listen to [three piece suit](https://youtu.be/Z6O2f8AWiL8) or [futureproof](https://youtu.be/syyqfa7ZUcM) but the whole album is super good atmosphere!! it's like a movie soundtrack go check it out <3
> 
> EDIT ALSO THERE'S VIOLENCE IN THIS CHAPTER BE WARNED I FORGOT TO UPDATE THE TAGS TIL JUST NOW

Here it is. The big day. Jaebum cracks his knuckles and settles more comfortably onto the bed, legs crossed and his head back against the headboard as he slots the cable into the back of his neck; everything goes black and he settles in for the unpleasant transition. Once it’s passed and he’s standing in his hub, he immediately swaps personas, staring at the avatar Renraku provided. It’s nothing special, just a guy in a nice suit that doesn’t really look anything like Jaebum, but it matches the employee whose SIN he’s using; he certainly looks like he’ll fit in with the rest of the crowd.

Appearance sorted, he strides over to the hub and pulls out a thread, shimmering gold and glittering in the disembodied light; he squeezes it, a blip of silver racing along it and vanishing off into the matrix, then a camera feed appears in front of him, a little below eye height and showing the inside of a rather nice looking car. 

“You hearing me Jinyoung?” He says aloud, brisk and no-nonsense; messy as he may be during regular human interactions, he knows how to behave during business. This much is familiar at least. The camera jerks slightly then settles back down, neon lights racing by beyond the windscreen, rain lashing against the plexiglass.

“I’ve got you.” He answers stiffly, breath rushing out a little too quickly; Jaebum made him jump. Stupidly amused by that, Jaebum ties the gold cord around his wrist and tugs on it, watching it ripple and vanish from sight while the connection remains, Jinyoung’s camera feed staying up in front of him. He resizes it, shrinking it and moving it down a little so it doesn’t distract him, then presses a hand to the tree trunk to find a link to Madrid.

“I’m bouncing through Spanish servers now, I’ll be ready to go in three minutes.” He says once he can see again, pulling up threads for a few different cities and datastreams around Madrid itself. Jinyoung’s feed shakes before it moves more smoothly as he gets out of the car, emerging into the late evening air. Someone’s holding an umbrella over him as no rain falls directly in front of the camera. Obviously he can’t reply now but Jaebum’s not particularly worried; rocky personal issues aside, they were doing this well before they started dating so working together is basically second nature by now. 

Satisfied with his signal scrambling, Jaebum hops back over to Neo-Tokyo. He opens his eyes to the Mitsuhama building lit up against the cyberspace sky, adverts littering the holographic windows and bright lights shining from the ground, spotlighting the way to the entrance. It’s already busy, bustling with suits and flanked by two intimidating sentries. Black ICE on the front door. Mitsuhama really mean business tonight. Straightening his jacket, Jaebum joins the influx, falling into line at the security checkpoint with one eye on the camera feed. Jinyoung’s also in line, facing the metal detectors and burly security guards patting everyone down.

A faceless scanner checks his SIN and for any illicit programming. It doesn’t find anything, obviously, Jaebum would  _ never  _ do such a thing. Nonchalant, Jaebum strolls past the checkpoint, not having to pretend that hard to be awed by the entrance hall; even with how many times he’s come through here to reach the elevator shaft, it’s still impressive, more so now it’s all decked up in glittering lights and fancy displays showing off the latest shows and tech advances. Jaebum wanders towards one of these and fakes interest.

It’s not much different on Jinyoung’s end, all shiny facades and pretty people in uniforms with Mitsuhama logos smiling too much as they guide people around and distribute champagne. One of the walls is reflective, basically just a huge mirror to make the hall look bigger but with added screens behind it to throw up advertisements and schedules as well. Jinyoung pauses in front of one of these, studying the itinerary with his lips pursed. With his hair perfectly styled and his hands tucked into his pockets, he looks really good; the camera is set into his tie clip, resting just above his waistcoat, matching jacket hanging open. Stupid handsome asshole. Jaebum looks away from the camera feed and pretends to be paying attention to whatever spiel the VI in front of him is spewing. 

Over the next half an hour Jaebum slowly gravitates towards the elevators, surreptitiously eyeing up the ICE standing at the end of the short corridor. It’s a deck-killer and a fairly heavily modded one, but Jaebum doesn’t think it will be able to see into the elevator itself, which makes his life easier. Jinyoung’s been making polite small talk and examining exhibits under the guise of assessing the market for similar products made by Renraku; he makes it look so easy, just talking to people and getting them to smile and believe his ruse entirely. It’s certainly a handy skill to have.

“Well, thank you so much for talking to me,” he says warmly, presumably with a charming smile if the way the woman he’s speaking to swoons is any clue, “I’m heading upstairs next, do you have any recommendations for products to watch out for?” And there’s Jaebum’s cue; he peels off from the crowd surrounding the demo for a new range of simsense chips and heads for the elevators. The sentry’s cameras on him are like a physical weight on his back as he presses the button and waits for the lift to make its way down from the first floor; the ground floor and the next three up are all in use for this gala, which means Jaebum’s got some wiggle room. 

Three people step out of the elevator when it reaches his floor and by some miracle he’s the only one who gets in, everyone else distracted by an announcement from one of the event organisers; the doors slide shut and Jaebum snaps his fingers, his regular infiltration persona taking the place of his disguise. He presses a gloved hand to the floor buttons, silver pooling around his palm and seeping into the mechanism; technically the matrix lifts and those of the physical building aren’t directly connected in that they don’t move at the same time but the override for the physical ones can be reached from in here.

The camera feed shows Jinyoung entering a lift too, empty apart from one attendant who’s really just an armed guard there to make sure no one tries to go to an off-limit floor. However, if Jinyoung is right about these shift changes that shouldn’t be a problem; Jaebum sends his elevator down, faster than it would normally go, towards the third basement but making the floor counter say he’s heading to the third floor  _ up  _ while Jinyoung heads upwards towards the second, though the guard pushes for the first floor. Jaebum pulls the security feed up for the third basement in both the matrix and offline, checking the corridor in front of the doors; clear for the moment.

When Jinyoung reaches the first floor, the attendant eyes him suspiciously but he’s already fishing a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. Apparently trusting Jinyoung to head to the floor he chose, he steps out of the lift and the doors slide smoothly shut behind him. 

“You know that would happen or was it a lucky guess?” Jaebum asks aloud, snorting when Jinyoung turns to face the mirror behind him so Jaebum can see the unimpressed arch to his eyebrows through his body cam.

“You aren’t the only one who does research.” He says haughtily, turning back to the doors as the elevator heads downwards while the floor counter says it’s going up. Laughing quietly, Jaebum concentrates on getting them both down to the basements, his own elevator sliding to a stop a few seconds before Jinyoung’s. There’s nothing on the cameras outside and he steps out at the same time as Jinyoung, sending the lifts back up to the third floor and cracking his knuckles. 

“Let’s go.” He says, maybe a little too eagerly, but Jinyoung just nods and presses his lips together to hide a smile in the feed from the security camera. “Head right then right again at the junction.” Jinyoung does as he’s told, straightening his cuffs and peering cautiously around the corner. Jaebum leaves him to it, taking off ahead to disable the hologram disguising the corridor leading to the stairwell and the alarm that’ll trigger should Jinyoung walk through it without the correct sensor; he crouches at the edge of the wall blocking his own progress and presses a palm to the floor, watching lines of silver melt across the corridor and up the wall and keeping an eye on his camera feeds. The next ICE patrol isn’t due for another two minutes but apparently the human patrols on Jinyoung’s end follow a different timetable; he stays flattened against the corner as voices approach, waiting until they emerge in front of the intersection. 

Jaebum barely registers the false wall dissolving in the corner of his eye as he watches the security camera feed with wide eyes; Jinyoung smoothly steps towards them, punches the closest guard in the throat and pulls the pistol from their belt with the other hand in the same motion. They gurgle and stumble backwards, clutching at their neck and their partner barely has time to gape and start reaching for their own gun before Jinyoung smashes the butt of the pistol into their temple. They crumple to the floor, out like a light and Jinyoung then punches the reeling one in the stomach and cracks them in the back of the head when they double over; they too pass out, crashing to the floor at Jinyoung’s feet. Breathing barely quickened, Jinyoung flicks a stray piece of hair off his forehead and stashes the pistol in the back of his waistband.

“Anywhere nearby I can put these two?” He asks briskly, looking up and down the corridor. Jaebum gapes - he’d forgotten how good Jinyoung is at this - silently for an embarrassingly long time before shaking himself out of it.

“Uh, y-yeah, there’s a storage closet on the left, first door you come to.” He stutters. An almost smug look passing briefly over his face, Jinyoung nods and reaches into his jacket, pulling something out; it looks like a roll of stickers, weirdly enough and he peels a couple off, plastering them onto the backs of the guards’ necks before effortlessly hauling one of them up over his shoulder - that shouldn’t be attractive but it somehow really is - to dump them into the storeroom, the other quickly joining their partner. “Wha-” Jaebum barely starts to ask before Jinyoung’s striding for the now revealed corridor.

“Sedative patches. I told you, megacorps have useful resources.” He answers, still smug. Jaebum huffs and stands up, stalking after him; he’s glad that Jinyoung can’t see him right now and also that he can’t blush in the matrix anyway. 

“Head down the stairs, right to the bottom, but don’t touch the door until I say.” Jaebum mutters, jogging past him and sighing internally at himself. Jinyoung hums a cheerful affirmative. Too cheerful if you ask Jaebum. It really is a massive relief to see him running how he always has though - even after selling his soul to a megacorp he tries not to kill anyone; Jaebum lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and heads over to the door to the lowest floor.

Of course, because he has no luck, the bomb is back; sighing to himself, Jaebum grabs the brackets and his red gloves from his pocket, pulling them on as the brackets come online. Jinyoung, still about halfway up the stairs - offline, there’s about three stories worth of stairs winding back and forth on themselves, the fourth basement’s really dug in below ground - abruptly stops and swears quietly. 

“Company.” He says quietly and then something weird happens; his hand covers the camera for a moment but then the angle changes, looking down from above as though the camera’s now set into the ceiling. Jaebum’s unfortunately not in a position to pay much attention - the bomb he’s wrist deep into is probably a bigger priority - but he catches glimpses of Jinyoung kicking the absolute shit out of a couple more security guards and gets to hear someone’s bones - he doesn’t know or want to know which bones - snap far too loudly; Jaebum feels vaguely nauseous and realises that Jinyoung may really have had a point about him not being cut out for street work. 

Shaking his hands out once the last guard stays down, Jinyoung straightens up and shoves his hair off his forehead, looking up into the camera; Jaebum plucks out the last wire and relaxes once a few seconds pass and nothing has exploded.

“You okay?” He asks, looking Jinyoung over through the feed but he seems unharmed and once again barely ruffled. He nods anyway, the camera lowering in angle so it’s about level with his head. “Is that camera a drone?” Jaebum asks incredulously - it was his tie clip, it’s so  _ small _ . Jinyoung just nods again. “Th- are they for sale?” Jaebum must have one. He’s not sure what he’ll do with it, but he must have one. 

“No, corporate use only.” Jinyoung looks amused as he heads for the door, the camera drone hovering just behind him. Jaebum then remembers they actually have work to do. 

“Oh, yeah the door’s safe, head left and keep going to the end of the corridor,” he says offhand, shouldering through his own virtual version and keeping an eye on his scanner as he proceeds down the path marked onto his map- “but they really aren’t for sale?” Jinyoung’s very obviously trying not to laugh as he shakes his head which is honestly fair as even Jaebum can hear that he’s whining but still, he’s not being very sympathetic. Huffing disappointedly, Jaebum stalks down the corridor, turning a corner and reeling back when he sees a clearly heavily augmented sentry ahead of him; thankfully it’s walking away and a little way away but it still hasn’t come up on his scanner. This doesn’t bode well. It is right in the way though and, well, Jaebum didn’t come in here to be nice or even particularly subtle at this point; he pulls a pistol from the holster on his thigh and whistles through his teeth. The thing clunks to a stop, head swivelling around on an axle, three eyestalks pointing at him and flaring bright white.

Jaebum levels the pistol and shoots all three out, breaking into a sprint forwards when it shudders and starts turning around properly, mounted turrets wheeling around to start shooting blindly into the corridor where he’d just been; Jaebum skids past it and leaps up onto its bulk to catch onto its head with his feet braced against its back, tossing his pistol aside - it’ll reappear in his holster - in favour of shoving a hand into the mess of wires between the head and the body, grabbing a fistful and yanking them out. Silver spreads up from the torn ends, the whole frame of it shaking and staggering to the side; swearing to himself, Jaebum clings on and grabs more wires, twisting them around his hand and pulling hard to rip them from the base of the sentry’s head. It goes limp all at once, crashing to the floor; Jaebum only just manages to jump off before he’s slammed into the wall, chucking his fistful of wires aside to see them dissolve into pixels before they reach the floor.

“Jaebum!” He hears Jinyoung snap, though it sounds more alarmed than angry. “Is everything alright?” He’s still walking down the corridor, looking between it and the camera with a worried frown.

“Yeah,” Jaebum replies, glad he can’t actually get winded in the matrix else he’s sure he’d be gasping for a while, “yeah I’m good. Head right when you reach the end of the corridor.” He directs, setting off running himself. Jinyoung huffs, loud enough the camera picks it up even hovering above him - so it was clearly deliberately that loud - but does as he’s told, his stolen gun held loosely at his side. 

Things go as expected from here; not smoothly, there’s a fair amount of hold-ups as Jinyoung knocks out more guards - leaving something of a trail of comatose bodies shoved hastily into storerooms where possible but it’s next to  _ im _ possible that they’re this far in without anyone realising, something proven by all the alarms Jaebum’s silencer keeps shutting down and the messages it keeps stopping from leaving this floor - and he cuts through defences and ICE. He’s also very glad that he doesn’t have to navigate any corridors with patchy floors since he’d almost certainly have fallen through them, what with how many places between which he’s having to split his attention. Regardless, they eventually reach the vault room door, maybe five minutes behind their estimated schedule - so pretty good going in fact. Jaebum sets to work disarming the bomb in the door yet again, vaguely keeping tabs on Jinyoung’s brisk dispatching of the guards outside on his end but trying not to get  _ too  _ distracted lest something terrible happen. He’s a big boy, he can handle it.

This bomb is bigger than the last one; they clearly have upped security as they’d expected. Still, could be worse, it could require a different program to disarm it but as it is it just takes a bit longer, long enough for Jinyoung to straighten up from putting a patch on the last guard and stare up into the drone camera with his arms folded impatiently. 

“Do you want to die or something? Give me a second.” Jaebum grumbles under his breath when his foot starts tapping. Jinyoung pointedly ignores him. “There, you’re good to open the door, but I don’t know-” Jinyoung opens the door and Jaebum wishes he could smack him upside the head when he immediately yanks it shut again at a yell from beyond it- “what’s on the other side.” Jinyoung just sneers at the camera and clicks the safety off on his gun. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Jaebum fishes his own tiny camera from his pocket and crouches down to examine the room beyond; the turrets are still there and still very big. “How many fucking times do I have to tell you not to just fucking open doors without checking-” he doubts Jinyoung is even listening to him considering he’s just shouldered the door open and ran inside but ranting to himself does wonders for his mindset- “it’s a miracle you’re not hurt more often, jackass.” Jaebum straightens up and draws his own pistol, yanking the clip out and swapping it for a different one, smacking it into place with a sharp sigh and kicking open the door on his end too. 

“I like to think of it as skill rather than divine intervention.” Jinyoung replies a little breathlessly, having knocked the rifle out of the sprawled guard’s hand and shot them in the kneecap to stop them getting up; they scream, clutching at their leg then slumping over in an unconscious heap when Jinyoung kicks them in the temple - overkill maybe but they’re probably not  _ dead _ . Shooting three times each at the turrets - they stiffen up mid-swivel, static crackling over them - Jaebum hopes Mitsuhama gives their security good medical coverage.

“Think of it however you want.” Jaebum mutters, jogging over to the left-hand turret and shooting it once more just to make sure it’s really immobile; he pries open a panel on the side, peering critically over the multitude of wires and red and orange flashing lights. Jinyoung splutters indignantly.

“I know what I’m doing!” He insists, hiding an amused grin as he paces along the wall of grated rooms and tries to peek inside. Reluctantly amused despite himself, Jaebum rolls his eyes and pulls a stick drive from his pocket, slotting it into one of the ports on the main module; the lights wink out then flicker back on, this time in greens and blues. Both turrets shudder and wheel to face the door again before shutting off into standby. 

“Right.” Jaebum rolls his eyes and stands. Jinyoung folds his arms and seems to be trying not to pout. “Okay, let’s find these blueprints.” He mumbles, more to himself than to Jinyoung, as he approaches the console in the centre of the room, grabbing another module from his pocket. 

“Any idea where they are?” Jinyoung asks, barely seconds later; Jaebum sighs at the still powering screen, a low headache throbbing at the base of his skull, about where his jack sits.

“Give me a second.” He mutters again, rolling his eyes when Jinyoung starts pacing.

“We may not have a second-” He starts to grumble impatiently like Jaebum’s not the one monitoring the calls in and out of the entire building and knows nothing has got through to raise any major alarms because he’s literally got a program blocking any attempts to do so.

“Jinyoung, I love you but would you shut the fuck u-” Oh. Oh fuck. Did he really just fucking say that? Jinyoung coughs, spluttering in shock and his head whipping up to stare into the drone with painfully wide eyes and Jaebum, frozen and staring down at the screen in complete horror, has never been so fucking glad that the cameras only go one way. Wow everything about this was such a bad idea, everything feels so fucking familiar and he just blurted out what he’d naturally have said way back when and now Jinyoung looks like he’s about to cry, his eyes huge and glistening and still staring at the camera. 

Jaebum’s thankfully saved from saying something by a soft ding from the monitor, the screen showing an inventory list of everything in the vaults. Sighing sharply, he scrolls through the list - its not even in code, there’s literally an entry that says “bioweapon designs” that’s apparently one of the things in the big vault - until he reaches “deck blueprints”. Allegedly it’s in vault seven; he taps the name and looks up at the camera feed when he hears a clunk. Jinyoung turns to look too, watching the grille on one of the left-hand rooms slide down into the floor and a light turn on, revealing a tiny room with a pedestal in the middle on which sits a small memory stick. A little anticlimactic maybe, but it certainly makes it easier to get it out of the gala. 

“Don’t touch that.” Jaebum barks when Jinyoung makes to do exactly that and if he sounds a little strangled it’s entirely because he’s in the matrix and it scrambles sound a bit. He turns back to the console, tapping at the screen to bring up the alarms and defences on the podium; there are several. It takes a minute to switch them all off - Jinyoung getting electrocuted really wouldn’t be conducive to a successful escape - but as soon as he gives the clear Jinyoung grabs it and drops it into a little grey pouch he stashes into a pocket on the inside of his jacket.

Well. That was about as easy as Jaebum could have hoped. That in itself is very alarming. 

“Um.” Jinyoung stutters. Jaebum clears his throat.

“Let’s get you out of here.” He mumbles, yanking the module from the monitor and stalking towards the door. Jinyoung nods, expression uncharacteristically sheepish but his movements are anything but when he reloads his gun and kicks the stirring guard back into unconsciousness on his way to the door. 

Jaebum’s actually a little glad that he shoves his door open to come face to face with a rather large sentry, it gives him somewhere to channel his frustration at himself; it lashes out with an arm that’s really just a very long serrated blade and he ducks under it, kicking out one spidery metal leg on his way past and yanking his pistol from its holster. Unfortunately this thing is modified in a rather novel way and has a tail that’s really just a knife on a prehensile rope and this catches him in the arm, spearing straight through then pulling itself free again with a sharp jerk. 

It hurts. A lot. Swearing very loudly and very colourfully, he shoots the sentry twice, the static stunning it long enough for him to clumsily swap out clips and level the gun again. The next shot takes its entire head off and it crumples to the floor in a metallic heap.

“What the hell is going on?” Jinyoung’s slightly panicked yelp cuts through Jaebum’s now internal swearing as he examines his arm; there’s definitely a hole in it, oozing silvery fluid and staining his jacket. It’s a bit weird getting hurt in the matrix since it’s not actual physical damage, it’s all mental so having a hole in his arm isn’t a huge issue beyond looking pretty bad, but it has made his headache a whole lot worse. 

“I’m fine. Let’s move.” Jaebum bites out, shaking his hand clean of silvery matrix blood and grimacing. His frown unconvinced, Jinyoung nods and heads down the corridor, back towards the stairs up. Jaebum follows his map, shoving his gun away and trying a lot harder to avoid ICE rather than risking knocking it out; he’s not in any danger yet but he’d rather not risk more permanent damage than this. 

They both manage to reach the staircase without major incident - clearly they’re between shift changes so the littered unconscious bodies will be great fun for the next guard shift to discover - and as he starts heading up the stairs, Jinyoung clips the camera back onto his tie. They haven’t said anything else this whole time. It feels awkward. Jaebum wants to smack himself but resolves to do it when he jacks out. Why did he have to fucking say that? Everything was so familiar he literally forgot that they are in no way together anymore. How did he even do that?

“The car is outside your building, you’ll know which one it is.” Jinyoung suddenly blurts - presumably he just got a message from someone outside the gala - taking the stairs two at a time. 

“Tinted windows?” Jaebum mumbles, not really meaning for him to hear but he chuckles and murmurs an affirmative anyway. They have too many stupid in-jokes, this sucks. Jaebum sighs and jogs a little faster up the stairs.

Jinyoung’s barely breathing heavily by the time he’s scaled all the stairs - Jaebum’s just glad he can’t get winded in the matrix or this would definitely be embarrassing - and he peeks cautiously around the corner; Jaebum pulls up the security camera feed to find the corridor clear.

“You’re good to go, I’ll keep an eye out.” He says briskly; Jinyoung nods, walking as fast as he can without actually running down the corridor towards the elevators. Jaebum runs ahead and presses his hand to the lift buttons, waiting until one of the elevators is empty - the attendant must be smoking again - before pulling it down to Jinyoung’s floor, again keeping the floor numbers on something not currently off-limits. He’s not worried about his own, he’s planning on jacking out from here; he’ll be bouncing between servers for a while anyway since he’s undoubtedly got some kind of tracker on him. 

The elevator doors slide open as Jinyoung steps in front of them. It had actually been there for maybe twenty seconds but obviously Jaebum had to make it look like he just timed its arrival perfectly. He thinks Jinyoung might know that too if his poorly concealed smile is any clue. 

“I’ll jack out once you’re in the lobby. Be quick getting out, the silencer I put on the alarms is only good for ten minutes.” Jinyoung grins.

“I’ll be out in five.” He probably will. Jaebum sighs and sets the elevator moving. 

“Be careful.” Jinyoung’s expression softens and he nods, doing up his jacket and smoothing down his hair in the mirrors lining the car. 

“You too.” He murmurs, straightening his cuffs and smiling slightly up at the security camera. Jaebum mumbles an okay and opens the door; he watches Jinyoung step out and blend into the crowd before turning away and drawing a doorway onto the wall. It glows white and he steps through, emerging onto the streets of Madrid; there’s definitely strings linking him back to Mitsuhama though and he loses count of how many datastreams he crosses to sever them, but eventually he’s clean and he pops back to his hub. 

The headache is the first thing he notices when he jacks out; it’s so much worse out here. He allows himself two minutes of groaning pathetically while curled into a ball and cradling his head in his hands before he forces himself to move, gathering his things together and shoving them into his bag. He takes a lot more care with his deck, packing it up carefully next to his old one before zipping up his suitcase and hauling it out of the room. He drops the keys onto the reception desk, once again unmanned, before heading out of the building and into the downpour. 

Sure enough, he knows which car is his; he heads for the entirely black SUV with practically opaque windows, clambering into the back seat and shivering. The driver doesn’t acknowledge him even when he mumbles a hello, just puts the car into drive and starts it moving, gliding silently through neon-lit streets. Jaebum drops his aching head into his hands again and wishes for the umpteenth time that he wasn't such a disaster area.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! this chapter was actually on time!! but I fear the next one won't be so please be patient with me!! we've finally had the heist though!! ~~as in shadowrun the build up was so much longer than the actual run lmao~~ let me know what you think down below or as usual on [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles) thanks friendos!!! <3<3


	8. Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey friendos sorry for the wait!! and that this isn't on sunday lol but I thought i'd get this out asap so enjoy!! song for this chapter is [a thousand years - scandroid](https://youtu.be/o8Bj3A53N2M) it's good!! and its p appropriate :)) in places at least anyway lol

It’s not a long drive to wherever he’s meeting Jinyoung but the stress of it has it feeling a lot longer. Jaebum fidgets a lot and laments his lack of painkillers, head throbbing with each slight bump in the road or too bright light. It’s a relief when they glide to a stop and he can stumble out onto the pavement, dragging his suitcase with him. It’s not exactly a glamourous building, just a big grey apartment building that looks half-abandoned. A woman is waiting outside, hair pinned up tight and a dark jacket slung over her shoulders.

“Mr Im, this way please.” She says, clipped and controlled. Swallowing apprehensively, Jaebum follows her inside. He’s actually very glad this building’s elevator has a large out-of-order sign on it since he really doesn’t want to have to be stuck in a small space with this incredibly stone-faced woman for any length of time. As it is, he follows her up a few flights of stairs and down a corridor with damp down the walls and cracks in the ceilings until she stops in front of a plain door and knocks once. Silence for a moment, then it creaks open and Jaebum’s waved inside.

“Mr Im,” Ms Kim says smoothly, sat with her legs crossed on the ratty sofa in front of a pair of rather large and well armed bodyguards, “it’s good to see you. Feel free to start setting up.” That sounds like less of a suggestion than an order; skin crawling, Jaebum keeps his mouth shut for once and does as he’s told. The sooner he’s out of this particular run-down apartment, the better.

His deck’s powering up by the next time someone speaks; it’s one of the bodyguards, bending down to murmur into Kim’s ear. They clearly aren’t aware of his implants since he can hear them word for word:

“They’re being followed. Park is shot but the drive is secure.” Oh they definitely know Jaebum can hear them now what with the less than subtle panicked coughing fit he breaks into when he chokes on his own saliva; Jinyoung’s been shot?! Kim side-eyes him suspiciously but speaks at the same volume, clearly not caring that he can hear.

“ETA?” She asks briskly.

“Fifteen minutes at the earliest, they’re working to lose the tail.” He replies.

“They don’t come within two miles of this place before they’re sure they’re clear.” The guard nods and presses two fingers to his earpiece as he straightens back up. Jaebum stares unseeingly down at his deck, his hands shaking as he automatically finishes setting it to load the right programs.

Fifteen minutes has never taken so long. Jaebum spends the first five fidgeting next to and with his deck and gives up on pretending to keep it together for the last ten and paces up and down the room. Kim eyes him with a neutral expression but somehow conveys her disdain without even moving a muscle. It’s quite a skill. But then fifteen minutes pass and there’s still no sign of Jinyoung and the others’ he’s presumably with; no one else seems to care, no one else moving besides adjusting position every so often. Jaebum swallows stickily, his mouth dry; how long is this going to take?

Another ten agonising minutes apparently; Jaebum almost trips over his own feet when there’s a single sharp rap at the door to the apartment. Kim sighs almost inaudibly but it’s pointed enough that Jaebum bristles - never in his job description did it say anywhere that real world coordination was a necessity so she can get of her high horse - but he forgets all about that in the next second because Jaebum’s mind is abruptly preoccupied elsewhere with three things: one, Jinyoung walks in the door; two, his suit looks even better on him in person even if the jacket’s now missing and three, he is bleeding through the bandage tied around his left bicep.

“The drive?” Kim asks briskly; Jinyoung nods and dips his right hand into his pocket, passing the memory stick to her; he glances briefly at Jaebum, offering him a barely perceptible smile that Jaebum doesn’t return, instead frowning anxiously at his injured arm. She turns it over in her hands a couple of times, eyes narrowed critically, before looking over to Jaebum and holding it out to him, the stick sitting on her upturned palm. Gingerly, Jaebum takes it, flicking the cap off and turning on his heel; he plugs it into a port on the side of his deck and sighs when a green light flicks on. “Are you ready to begin, Mr Im?” She asks, almost kindly but there’s an undercurrent of sharp impatience. Swallowing hard, Jaebum shrugs.

“As I’ll ever be.” He plops down into the chair next to his deck and crosses his legs. It’s always weird jacking in while someone’s watching but right now he feels really uncomfortable; it’s exposing, he’s going to be basically passed out in front of these corps and the only reason he’s not twice as twitchy as he already feels is Jinyoung being there. He’s familiar and Jaebum trusts him - and isn’t that a personal revelation that has him feeling even more anxious about what happens after all of this - to make sure that no one tries anything; it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Ms Kim wouldn’t order her bodyguard to slit his throat before he jacks out. Means they wouldn’t have to pay him after all, one more loose end tied up. 

Having successfully freaked himself out, Jaebum settles into the lumpy chair as much as he can and takes a long breath before picking up the cable linking to his deck. He slots the jack into place easily and breathes deeply again before pressing the button on the side and blacking out. 

He forgot how much of a difference he found there was between jacking in with his new deck and this one; this takes so much longer and the entire time his head feels weird, like it’s stuffed with steel wool to which someone every so often applies an electric current. It also looks weird when he finally surfaces - this deck isn’t connected to the matrix properly, Renraku being so insistent on keeping it out of the possibility of being in the public domain, so his hub looks strange and bare, the tree stood there but only one royal blue thread hanging from it. 

Jaebum walks over to the trunk and raises a hand to grasp it, only to notice the golden ribbon still tied around his wrist and now fluttering gently; he tugs on it experimentally and a camera feed opens, showing the room and Ms Kim and her bodyguards and- oh. Himself. Oh that’s weird. Why has no one ever told him he looks like an idiot when he’s passed out like that? Still, he feels a little better now he can see what everyone’s doing and it hits him hard right in the centre of his chest when he realises that Jinyoung definitely did that deliberately which means he probably knew it would relax him a bit. 

Forcing himself out of his own head, Jaebum grabs the blue thread and pulls, vision fading out then clearing again to face a courtyard. It’s all pale stone with a fountain ahead, a large hall beyond with marble steps leading up to it. The sky is blue, sun shining between light white clouds, but it’s eerily silent, the leaves on the simulated trees lining the walls ringing the building and little garden dead still and even Jaebum’s footsteps against the stone as he moves forward are utterly soundless. 

“You hearing me?” He asks aloud, a little anxiously; he throws a scan ahead of him, wondering if there’s something his deck missed during the automatic precursory check it would have made when he plugged the memory stick in - it gave him a green light but still, it isn’t infallible. But there are nods in the camera feed and Kim pipes up with a curt yes, so that’s mildly reassuring. Maybe the programmers couldn’t be bothered to simulate sound when they designed the interface for this data packet.

The back of his neck prickling, Jaebum slowly walks towards the building. The fountain is running but the water splashing into the basin makes no noise. It also flickers and twitches every twelve seconds; it’s a loop, the same footage playing over and over again. It’s very unsettling.

The facade of the building is nice enough and doesn’t raise anything on Jaebum’s scan, but something about it doesn’t seem quite right. It kind of looks like a museum, white steps leading up to a large set of dark wooden doors standing open and framed by pillars holding up the sloped roof but there’s a stretch of platform in front of the doors and on this there’s a bronze statue. Maybe that’s the problem, it just seems like a bad place for a statue; it’s of an archer of all things, way taller than him with longbow drawn and robes billowing like in a wind, but it has no face, just smooth metal. More than slightly creeped out but not having found anything on the scan, Jaebum disregards it and starts up the stairs. 

His neck prickles again but he doesn’t think too much about it, just side-eyes the statue as he steps past it. The arrow nocked in its bow is for one thing very long and alarmingly sharp and also a different colour to the rest of the statue, greyish metal rather than bronze. Weird. Jaebum looks it over again just to make sure but nothing comes through, even on a deep scan.

“What is going on?” Kim’s voice filters through the camera, tinny and irritable. Jaebum rolls his eyes.

“Relax, I’m getting there.” He mutters, not  _ really  _ meaning for her to hear but if she does, well, that’s her problem; in fact, she looks about as pissed off as she can without actually moving much of her face in fact. There’s a sharp noise like a snort was turned into a cough from Jinyoung and Jaebum really has to bite down an answering laugh, grinning to himself as he turns away from the apparently normal statue and heads into the building. 

There’s one room as far as Jaebum can tell, just the hall he’s in right now; there aren’t any side doors or passages hidden behind walls and the only thing in the room besides more pillars is a pedestal in the centre and on that pedestal is a black box. Nothing appears between him and this, but there’s a whole mess of red and yellow wires covering the box and holding it to the marble showing up on the scan of the room. Dipping his hands into his pockets and pulling out a pair of slightly silvery gloves, Jaebum approaches the box and circles it, his deck picking out the individual criss-crossing wires and where they fasten.

“You have a second stick ready?” He says aloud, glancing at the camera feed to see Kim pulling another memory stick from her pocket and passing it to a bodyguard. He can’t help bristling when they approach his deck - it may be his old one but it’s still his and still not for corporates to be near, he should have asked himself before he jacked in but what with how frazzled he is he completely forgot - only to slump in relief when Jinyoung bustles over and takes it from them.

“It goes here.” He says briskly as he slots it into the right port, like it was just a matter of efficiency. Jaebum almost believes that it is, but then in the split second that Jinyoung’s facing away from the others in the room as he returns to where he was presumably leaning against the wall, he throws a okay sign into the camera. Should his heart have been beating normally, Jaebum’s sure it would be skipping a beat or something. As it is he’s glad he doesn’t know that for sure, dragging a hand down his face and deciding he’s just grateful rather than all fluttery at the gesture before he crouches down next to the pedestal and examines one of the spots to which the wires are attached. Carefully, he reaches up to it, gingerly pinches one of them and tugs it free. It flickers and dissolves out from his hand, some of the loops of red vanishing from around the box. That’s a relief; it was either going to do that or erase everything, so this is a good start.

It takes twenty three minutes to work all the wires free during which Kim impatiently interrupts him no less than seven times asking how long this will take - Jaebum stopped answering with anything other than a grunt after the fourth - but eventually the last one fizzles out and Jaebum stands back up triumphantly. The box just looks like a strongbox, opening like one too; it’s not even locked. Inside it is what looks like another memory stick, but when Jaebum picks it up the matrix shudders and an holographic screen appears in front of his eyes, scrolling through text too fast for him to read properly. He does pick up “matrix 2.0” though, which is interesting to say the least; he pulls open a blank box and copies the data over into the recesses of his deck, hoping that it’ll just get buried by just how much junk he has in here should Renraku insist on scanning for it before they pay him. He’s really hoping they don’t, he probably has data in here he’s stolen from them before. 

“I’m copying it over to you now.” He says aloud, closing his own box and pulling open the one representing Kim’s memory stick; he drops the data packet into it, clearing it from the old one as he does so. The box shatters into pixels, leaving the pedestal empty. Jinyoung comes closer again and pulls the stick from the back of his deck, passing it over to Kim, who cracks the closest thing to a genuine smile Jaebum’s ever seen on her face.

“Alright, we have them.” She says, clicking the lid onto the stick; of course she probably doesn’t know Jaebum can see her. “Your pay is being transferred into your account now.” Jaebum cracks his neck and hums; it’s really done then. And that brings with it its own trials and tribulations.

“Great. Pleasure doing business with you.” He mutters, stepping away from the pedestal and heading back to the front door of the hall. The camera shifts a little, scooting to the side as Kim and her bodyguards start packing up to leave; Jinyoung hovers, not doing anything to help them and moving a little bit closer to Jaebum’s motionless body. 

“I’ll meet you back at HQ, Ms Kim.” He says politely; her eyes cut over and into him but she doesn’t say anything, just nods shortly. Nerves fluttering in his stomach, Jaebum tries not to panic as he considers what happens next. He doesn’t  _ know  _ what happens next and that in and of itself is completely terrifying. Still, he can’t exactly delay leaving, there’s nothing else to do in here; Jaebum steps off the final step and heads towards the doorway hovering in the air.

Or, he tries to. He finds that he can’t, that his feet won’t move any further forward, something tugging at his chest and pulling him to a stop. Confused, he looks around but nothing’s out of the ordinary, but then he jolts again, something impacting against his back, then something else sends a puff of dirt into the air in front of him. Jaebum looks down.

Oh. Shit. Jaebum’s mouth falls open but nothing comes out except a quiet wheeze, pain slamming into his head like it wasn’t real until he knew what was happening; there are two metal rods - two  _ arrows _ \- spearing through his chest, angled like they came from the hall entrance and embedded deep into the ground in front of him and stopping him from moving. And also living soon, probably. 

“Jaebum?” Jinyoung yelps, shrill enough to cut through some of the white noise buzzing in Jaebum’s agonised head; he looks up at the camera feed to see himself, closer than before and paler, eyes rolling under their lids. There’s also blood running from his nose dribbling down his neck and staining his shirt. Quite a lot of it. He tries to answer but all that he can manage is a cut-off gurgle as both arrows shift and pull backwards, one by one, ripping their way out. Jaebum’s thrown backwards, landing hard on his back on the stairs leading into the hall; everything hurts, everything hurts so much. In utter disbelief, Jaebum stares up at the sky, watching the clouds and what he can see of the roof flicker and start to dissolve, his own hand doing the same when he manages to lift one. 

“-leave him there. It’s not our problem, this job is over-” Jaebum catches past his hammering pulse, echoing in his ears. He shouldn’t be hearing it, he doesn’t while he’s in here. It’s hard to breathe too, but he shouldn’t be breathing either. The sky shudders, the building vanishing completely and it shatters into pixels to reveal different shapes, blurred and moving and human-shaped maybe, before the clouds reappear, if jagged and discoloured. The sky is red now.

“-go to hell, I’ll do it myself-” Is that Jinyoung? He’s shouting, furious and frantic, but it’s muffled like he’s in another room. 

Jaebum feels weird. His tongue won’t work and it feels fuzzy, like it’s full of static like his head and everything hurts, but distantly, like it’s happening to someone else. The sky short-circuits again, shattering into multi-coloured fragments with something else visible between the pieces, that human-like shape again. 

“-hear me? Can you-” the shape says with Jinyoung’s voice- “Jaebum you-” he doesn’t know if it’s his eyes working again or his deck or his brain trying to fill in the blanks but the silhouette looks more like Jinyoung now- “breathe, you need to b-” There’s an awful high-pitched whine, so loud that Jaebum, already teetering on the edge of consciousness, blacks out for an instant before coming to to see Jinyoung more clearly. His mouth is moving but everything is silent now. It’s all silent and Jaebum’s head hurts so badly. It definitely is happening to him now.

The sky comes back. It’s blue again, but the clouds are cracked and inky cyberspace leaks out. Jaebum stares up at it. He still can’t breathe, but he still shouldn’t need to. He’s in the matrix. Something has gone terribly wrong.

“Please, please let this work-” Jagged red text appears in a flickering box in front of Jaebum’s eyes and he sluggishly wonders what it’s talking about. 

A jolt rocks Jaebum’s body again and there’s a blissful second of nothing, absolutely nothing, no pain or anything, before he’s slammed back into awareness. He really wishes he hadn’t. He thought it was bad before, that it hurt before, but that was fucking nothing. It’s like he’s been shot in the head and the chest at the same time, everything in agony and he can’t hear and he can’t see properly and he still can’t fucking breathe because there’s something in the way and all he can taste is metal. 

It is a mercy when he feels himself passing out; Jaebum doesn’t even try to fight it, actively embracing nothingness. It can’t be any worse than this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so,,,,, still glad i'd updated lmao I did it again with the cliffhangers I guess <3 ~~the end of this chapter was like one of the first scenes I had for this fic rip~~ thanks for reading!! as always tell me your thoughts down below or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles) and keep an eye out for the next and final chapter T^T it may take me a while bc im so busy rip but it will appear hopefully sooner rather than later!! <3<3 thanks friends


	9. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey i'm sorry for the long wait ive had a chest infection which had me in bed for a week and then I was scrambling to catch up on work I missed and im super tired bc its the end of the semester but enough excuses!! have a song it's [connection by scandroid](https://youtu.be/l37jr5dAJxQ) and it's good go listen to it and read this chapter <3 love u all

Jaebum wakes up. This in itself is good. The rest of it, as he discovers when awareness begins to come back to him properly, is less good; his head aches like he’s been beaten over it repeatedly and there’s a weird prickling sensation in what feels like his brainstem, itching all the way down his spine whenever he so much as twitches. Not that he can do much beyond that right now; he blinks a few times, squinting against the lights above him. He’s lying down, that much he can tell, and the room is mostly white, but he can’t really focus on anything just yet. Something’s beeping to his right, quiet and rhythmic. 

“I told him you’d wake up the second he left.” Jaebum hears faintly, muttered from somewhere close-by and coming closer until a darker shape resolves into a person next to him; the man he doesn’t recognise peers at him, eyes narrowed critically but softening into a smile when he realises Jaebum’s aware of his expression. “Hi there. Don’t try and speak yet,” he interrupts when Jaebum begins to do exactly that only to find his voice is barely a rasp, “you’ve been out for a day or so, you’ll want to drink something in a minute.” He straightens back up and turns to the machines set up next to Jaebum’s bedside - he realises he is both in a bed and hooked up to these machines, tubes and cables looping from the IV line in the crook of his elbow and the cuff on his wrist - tapping at one of the screens and nodding to himself. “Seems like the nanos are nearly done. Pretty fast work, must not have been as extensive as he thought.” The man is mumbling like he’s talking to himself again but he beams when Jaebum coughs questioningly. “You should be glad your friend is so loaded, he got you the best nanobots out there. Run-of-the-mill ones would have had you out for a week at least.” His friend? Which friend, Mark? Mark’s not loaded, Mark’s street level like him. Maybe Youngjae? Wait, why the hell did he need nanobot treatment anyway? Everything hurts like he’s been hit by Lone Star or something, what happened to him?

“You okay there?” The man - the nurse, Jaebum now realises, he’s wearing scrubs with a logo with a caduceus on it, though he doesn’t recognise the rest of the logo - asks, bending over him again to peer at his face. Jaebum grunts and manages to rasp something approximating a yes even if he’s really confused and considerably sore. Apparently unconvinced, the nurse stands back up and turns back to the machines. “Okay well now you’re awake I’ll turn the nanos down a bit, they’ll finish up but it’ll take a little bit longer.” He says briskly and taps at something again; Jaebum sighs heavily in relief when his spine stops vibrating. 

“Thanks.” He mumbles, gingerly tilting his head to the side, the starchy pillow crinkling under him. The nurse hums cheerily and grins at him again. He’s very smiley. Jaebum’s not sure if it’s comforting or disconcerting. 

It turns out to be comforting if just because Jaebum could really use a little bit of that after his health situation gets explained; apparently he’d almost died. That makes Jaebum almost die again - okay, that’s probably an exaggeration - as he chokes on the water he’s given; the nurse tells him that apparently he’d been hit by something hard enough to damage the connection between himself and his deck and the resulting biofeedback had not been good for him, to put it mildly. Reeling somewhat, Jaebum tries to remember what happened, but the memory is just out of reach and thinking too hard makes his head hurt worse.

“Don’t panic, it’ll come back to you,” the nurse says reassuringly, still poking at the monitors, “amnesia after dumping out like you did isn’t common.” Okay, but it’s not unheard of then; not very reassured, Jaebum wriggles into a more comfortable position and sighs, squeezing his eyes shut. This fucking sucks.

The door handle rattles suddenly - it’s only now that it occurs to Jaebum that he’s in a private room, not a ward; clearly expenses really haven’t been spared - and it swings open as Jaebum cracks an eye open to peer at it. 

Jinyoung loses his grip on the door when they make eye contact, his eyes popping comically wide; the door swings shut heavily, almost smacking him in the nose but he manages to catch it again before that happens. Jaebum, who can now recall the last few weeks and the business and working with his ex and all of the messiness that resulted as well as getting seriously shredded by whatever the fuck that revenge program was - apparently he just needed something shocking to bring it all back to him - tries to speak and fails, just staring at Jinyoung with his mouth hanging open dumbly. 

The nurse clears his throat. Jaebum is very glad he didn’t have to break the silence first.

“I’ll leave you guys to it,” he says, forcedly light to try and diffuse some of the weird atmosphere that’s settled over them, “if you need anything, the call button is here.” He pats the side of the bed and brushes down his scrubs, offering Jinyoung a polite nod on his way past. He steps back out of the room, holding the door as the nurse squeezes by, then trudges inside a little more sheepishly. Grimacing, Jaebum shuffles up the bed a bit, flopping against the multitudes of pillows with a huff when he’s a little more upright and watching Jinyoung fidget next to the door as it swings shut behind him. 

“Hi,” he mumbles, looking down at his hands, “how are you feeling?” Jaebum tilts his head, eyeing him closely; he looks like he hasn’t slept, though he’s changed out of his suit. It’s kind of jarring actually, seeing him in regular civilian clothes again rather than expensive corp wear. He looks more like the old Jinyoung, how Jaebum remembers him from before everything went to shit. 

“You told Kim to go to hell.” Is the first stupid fucking thing that Jaebum blurts; what happened after he got hit by whatever the fuck that program was is a jumbled mess, but he remembers snippets and that’s one snippet he remembers pretty clearly. That and being in a lot of pain. Jinyoung slumps, chin dipping to his chest.

“Please don’t remind me,” he asks weakly, scrubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, “I have heard enough about that over the last twenty four hours to last several lifetimes.” Jaebum bites at his lips to try and stop himself laughing, but then Jinyoung lifts his head again with a long-suffering sigh and he can’t really help it. He does regret it though as it makes his headache worse, but it might be a little bit worth it when Jinyoung relaxes enough to crack a reluctant smile and shuffle over to perch on the edge of one of the chairs arranged next to Jaebum’s bed.

“You-” Jaebum stutters when he stops laughing, sobering up as the weight of realisation settles onto him - if Jinyoung is the friend the nurse was waiting for, then he’s the one behind all of  _ this _ , “wait, you- how fucking much did you blow on this?!” He demands, wiggling his arm so the tubes attached to it rattle against the IV stand. Jinyoung looks confused for an instant before his eyes widen and he leans back in his chair, eyes cast to the ceiling in what seems to be a combination of disbelief and despair.

“Please tell me you did not just insinuate that saving your life was a waste of money.” He says very flatly. Jaebum gapes at him; that was a bit of a leap, he just meant that he didn’t have to save it quite so lavishly as he did. “Because I believe you were the one who kept talking about how much corps make-” He stops when Jaebum attempts to tell him to shut up but just ends up spluttering wordlessly; he looks vaguely alarmed, eyes cutting over to the machinery next to him as though checking if something’s malfunctioning or he’s actually dying or something. With an effort, Jaebum stops and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to order his thoughts into something somewhat coherent.

“I meant,” he says evenly, trying not to cringe when Jinyoung lowers his head to stare at him stone-faced, “that you didn’t have to do it so- privately-” Jinyoung’s eye twitches and Jaebum raises his hands in surrender- “but still you- thank you.” He mumbles, face warming up. Jinyoung blinks a few times, then looks down.

“That’s not- you don’t have to thank me, that’s not what  _ I _ meant.” He mutters, mollified; he curls up on the chair, crossing his legs and hunching over his lap. 

“I know, but you still- didn’t have to. So thank you.” Jaebum repeats stiffly - it would have been easier for him not to in fact, that’s what Kim and the rest told him to do anyway. And he’s apparently been getting shit for it, so that’s even more obvious.

“Wh-” it’s Jinyoung’s turn to splutter, head snapping back up to gape at him- “of course I had to, you stupid-” he stops and sighs sharply but it doesn’t hide the way his lips tremble before he speaks again- “I wasn’t going to just- leave you there. Not-” He sniffs and gulps audibly, scrubbing a sleeve over his face. Chest aching and not from the nanos this time, Jaebum shifts and starts to speak but Jinyoung coughs pointedly and glowers at him. “Shut up, just-” he sniffs again, eyes glistening under the harsh neon lights- “after all of this shit, you really think I’d just let you die?” When he puts it like that, Jaebum does feel admittedly - and maybe a little deservedly - stupid. 

“Still.” He mumbles, but doesn’t say anything else; what else is there to say? Shaking his head slightly, Jinyoung scoots his chair a little bit closer and his hand twitches towards the bed like he was going to touch something but thought better of it, instead crossing his legs and fidgeting with his hands in his lap. 

“What happened in there?” Jinyoung asks timidly, but not like he's trying to lead into telling him what happened, actually like he doesn't know. Jaebum, fortunately or not, does know, but Jinyoung continues anxiously before he can speak. “I kept your decks away from management, they keep trying to get me to hand them over to “find what went wrong” but that's bullshit so…” He tails off, hands raised to air-quote dropping back to his lap. Relieved that his stuff remains his and not bugged by Renraku, Jaebum sighs.

“I can't be totally sure without going back into the code, but I think it was a sleeper program.” He answers grumpily - it's some right bullshit is what it is. Jinyoung just stares at him blankly and he sighs again. “They activate at a certain trigger but until that trigger they're almost impossible to detect because they technically don't exist until the conditions are met. It's complicated and very hard to do well enough to be effective.” Jaebum's never actually encountered one before, hence it never even occurred to him as a possibility. Jinyoung frowns, rubbing his temple with the tips of his fingers.

“So Mitsuhama put this in these plans for what, revenge?” He asks sceptically. Jaebum shrugs.

“Probably more of a failsafe,” he muses, “the data can't leak if the thief is dead.” Jinyoung swallows noticeably at the last word and glances away, a shadow passing over his face. 

“No, I suppose it can't.” He mumbles; Jaebum shifts in place, not sure what to say to that. So, he doesn’t; he changes the subject.

“How’s your arm?” To be fair, he is actually worried considering Jinyoung did get shot, but he just shrugs and touches his bicep.

“It’s fine. Renraku pays to get me fixed up,” he says, bitterness bubbling below the even surface of his voice, “it’ll be a scar in a week.” Well. That’s impressive. “Oh, um-” he clears his throat and scratches the back of his neck- “I have something for you, I forgot.” He reaches up to his neck, hand slipping under his hoodie and there’s some wild beeping from the heart rate monitor as Jaebum’s kicked into something of a miniature panic attack; the only thing he can think of that would require reaching into his shirt like that is the fucking engagement ring he has on a necklace and what the hell would he even say to that? But Jinyoung just starts and glances at the machine then back at him with a confused frown, blinking quickly as he pulls something off the edge of his t-shirt; Jaebum breathes out and tries to look as innocent as possible even as his heart rate slows back down. “Here.” Jinyoung says, slow enough to show he’s suspicious but also willing to drop it for now; he holds his hand out palm up, a little metal thing sitting in the middle of it. Frowning slightly, Jaebum picks it up and turns it over in his fingers a few times before it twigs.

“Wait, is this your tie-clip robot?” He asks, peering closer at it eagerly, barely hearing Jinyoung’s affirmative answer. There’s a tiny button on the hinge edge and he presses it, mouth falling open as it unfolds and rearranges into what looks like an extremely miniature hovercraft with a miniscule lens on the front; it lifts into the air with a barely audible hum, buzzing around to float over Jinyoung’s right hand - he’s holding another tiny clip, even tinier than the first one.

“It just follows this around at the moment-” he wiggles the other clip and the hovering robot shakes side to side- “but it’s programmable I think.” He offers Jaebum the other clip and he takes it gingerly, waving it around to see the camera bot follow it and grinning like an idiot when it does. It’s so small, it’s adorable. Until something occurs to him:

“Hang on, this is for me? You said it was corporate use only?” Jaebum says suspiciously; Jinyoung smiles innocently.

“I broke it while I was trying to get you here.” He says mock-regretfully. Jaebum looks between him and the tiny flying camera with wide eyes. “Yet another thing management’s been yelling at me about.” Jaebum stares at it for a little longer.

“I love it.” He says very earnestly, carefully plucking it out of the air and pressing the little button on the top; it folds back into the tie clip, settling into the palm of his hand. Jinyoung doesn’t say anything, just smiles down at his hands folded in his lap, but then it fades and he doesn’t look back up, even when Jaebum’s done setting the clip onto the table next to him and peers at him confusedly. He’s quiet for a while and Jaebum doesn’t dare saying anything, the silence stretching thin and tense between them.

“Did you mean what you said? When we were getting the plans out?” Jinyoung asks eventually, slightly strangled like he’s not sure he even wants to hear the answer. Jaebum’s confused for an instant longer, but then he remembers what he said; he freezes and stares at the far wall, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. It would be really easy to make excuses, to say that it was simply force of habit and nothing more, that he was just caught up in nostalgia and spoke onto autopilot even after a year. He knows Jinyoung would buy it too, or rather, he’d accept it for the deflection it would be and not push it anymore, accept that whatever they are now is where it stays. Hell, Jaebum’s genuinely tempted to do that; he’s scared and he’s a decker, the instinct is to run away, to put a big mental warning over the scary thing and not go near it and stop pushing because if you push and you’re not prepared, you get hurt. And he’s discovered he really doesn’t like getting hurt.

“Yeah.” He croaks anyway, clearing his throat and twisting a fistful of bedsheets; avoidance is all well and good, but sometimes the only way to break through particularly stubborn defences is to run into it head-first and well, if Jinyoung - either of them, honestly - is anything, it’s particularly stubborn. Jinyoung’s silent and Jaebum doesn’t dare look at him - there’s a limit on his bravery - wishing that they were having this conversation literally anywhere else so that it wasn’t so painfully obvious how nervous he is; the heart monitor is going berserk, fast enough he’s surprised it’s not raised any alarms to the nurses or something.

A strange noise comes from Jinyoung’s chair, strange enough to startle Jaebum out his fearful paralysis; he’s all curled up again with his face buried in his arms and his shoulders shaking. As Jaebum stares at him wide-eyed he makes another weird noise and then he finally realises that Jinyoung’s crying. 

“Wh- hey,” he splutters, shifting in the stupid bed and wincing when it sends a throb of tingles up and down his back, “hey, don’t cry, you-” unsurprisingly, Jinyoung keeps crying, sniffling into the sleeves of his sweater- “Jinyoung, come on, please look at me?” Jaebum finds himself begging, as weak to Jinyoung's sadness as he's always been; he sits up gingerly, twisting and shoving the covers off. His head aches and most of his muscles protest the movement, but Jinyoung finally lifts his head, face blotchy and tearstained and breaking Jaebum's heart a little bit all over again. His eyes pop wide open when he realises Jaebum's sat up.

“W-what are you- lie back down, you-” Jinyoung squawks wetly, scrambling to his feet and going to presumably push Jaebum back down but he’s played right into his hands; ignoring the unpleasant tugging from the IV line in his arm, Jaebum stands up and regrets it a bit as he almost blacks out but also doesn’t because he manages to grab the back of Jinyoung’s neck and pull him into a hug which is absolutely not partially because he’s realising he can’t really stand on his own right now. Jinyoung squeaks but hugs him back gingerly after a second’s delay, burying his face into his shoulder. Wavering on the edge of fainting, Jaebum lets Jinyoung take most of his weight and clings to his hoodie, turning his nose into his neck and sighing. It feels almost exactly like before and that has a warm content feeling settling into Jaebum’s stomach, but there’s one little difference.

“You changed your cologne.” He mumbles, frowning a little. Jinyoung chokes on a semi-hysterical laugh and nods against his shoulder.

“Different brand.” He manages to rasp. Jaebum hums, black spots starting to clear from his vision.

“I like the old one better.” He says, maybe a little bit cheekily but it’s worth it; Jinyoung snorts, giggling into Jaebum’s stupid hospital clothes - clearly since it’s private he doesn’t have to wear a horrible gown thing - before lifting his head, a fond smile on his face even if his eyes are still wet.

“Sit down, asshole.” He mutters, wriggling free and pushing on Jaebum’s shoulder like he’s going to anything except fall over when he lets go. With a huff, Jaebum does as he’s ordered but he grabs a handful of Jinyoung’s hoodie as he does so, yanking him down too; he yelps and almost over-balances, glowering at him despite flushing deeper red. “What are you doing?” He hisses, face inches from Jaebum’s.

“I’m going to kiss you.” He says this with far more confidence - and strength, he’s shaking quite badly from the exertion of all that - than he feels; he still feels rather like he’s about to faint but in more of an emotional way than a physical one. Jinyoung squeaks again.

“Really?” He clearly didn’t meant to say this as he physically winces and splutters a bit more. “I- you- okay?” He phrases it as a question but there’s a bright hopeful light glittering in his eyes. Jaebum grabs the back of his neck again and pulls him a little bit lower.

This bit is exactly the same as it always was. Well, slightly more tear-stained, but still so familiar. It feels a little bit like coming home, like the year-old cracks in Jaebum's heart are finally starting to smooth over. Jinyoung's lips are warm and soft and he's holding Jaebum's face in his hands so delicately like he's something breakable - though to be fair that's probably warranted after what happened - and then when they part again he promptly lets go, plops onto the bed next to Jaebum and bursts into tears again. With a heavy sigh, Jaebum wraps an arm around his shoulders and tugs him into his side, dropping a kiss onto the top of his head and closing his eyes with his lips still pressed there.

“I'm sorry,” Jinyoung stutters between sobs, throwing his arms around Jaebum's waist and burying his face in his shirt, “I'm so sorry for everything, I never should have- I'm sorry-” 

“I know,” Jaebum whispers, “I know you are, please don't cry.” Predictably, this doesn’t help; Jinyoung does stop apologising though, instead focussing on crying harder into Jaebum’s shoulder. Jaebum’s not sure how long it takes him to stop, just letting him be and rubbing his back soothingly with his cheek against the top of his head, but eventually he does, shaking turning into trembling and then just an occasional jerk, but he doesn’t let go. He clings closer in fact, nose digging uncomfortably into Jaebum neck.

“Sorry.” He mumbles again when Jaebum grunts but this time he doesn’t sound that apologetic and he once again doesn’t let go. He turns his head a little at least. Jaebum sighs.

“You okay?” He asks quietly; Jinyoung mumbles an unconvincing yes but keeps his face hidden. Rolling his eyes fondly, Jaebum tousles the back of his hair and gently starts pushing him away, then firmly when gentle fails; face flushed, Jinyoung won’t look at him when he finally peels him off, keeping his eyes down and his lips pushed out into a pout. 

“What happens now?” Jinyoung asks thickly, sniffling and wiping his eyes on his sleeves. And that’s the question isn’t it; Jaebum looks down, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“I don’t know but I-” he swallows hard, barely audible when he continues- “I don't want you to go again.” Jaebum bites on his tongue, staring down at his hands in his lap. There's a sniffle, then Jinyoung hesitantly reaches for his hand and squeezes it.

“Then I won't.” He murmurs, smiling tearfully but brightly when Jaebum risks a glance up. Something warm fluttering in his belly, Jaebum smiles back.

Jinyoung almost jumps out of his skin when the door rattles and gets flung open; Jaebum tries not to laugh as he claps a hand to his chest and slumps back into his chair as the nurse from before bustles in, eyes shut with a long-suffering expression on his face. The glare he gets out of the corner of one of Jinyoung’s eyes tells him he failed.

“Okay, if you’re done with the touching reunion,” he says exasperatedly, “you need to lie back down or I will get someone to strap you to this bed.” He shoots Jaebum a pointed look on his way past, stopping before and tapping at the machines again; Jaebum glances sheepishly at Jinyoung who looks equal parts embarrassed and chastising before obeying with a quiet huff. “I swear it’s like looking after children, if the nanos have messed up because of all the excess neurotransmitters-” The nurse keeps muttering to himself and presses something on the screen; Jaebum twitches involuntarily and his spine starts feeling weird again, all the way up from his tailbone to his brain. “I’m going to knock you back out for a few hours so you stop getting so emotional.” The nurse says aloud again, pointedly staring at Jinyoung this time, who shrinks on himself and smiles apologetically. He presses something else and Jaebum abruptly feels very sleepy, eyelids heavier each time he blinks. 

“Thanks Youngjae, I’m sorry for the trouble.” Jinyoung says, offering the nurse a smile; he sighs but returns it.

“I know a Youngjae,” Jaebum blurts, barely thinking before speaking, “you’re less of an ass than him though.” Nurse Youngjae snorts and nods sagely while Jinyoung looks away with his hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking with repressed laughter. 

“Glad to hear that.” Youngjae says warmly, smiling and patting next to Jaebum’s hand on the bed. Pretty wavy by now, Jaebum hums.

“He’s pretty okay actually,” he muses vaguely, “but you can’t tell him I said that.” He frowns suspiciously at Jinyoung when he says this and he nods, grinning ear to ear.

“I won’t.” He says gravely, nodding gratefully at Youngjae on his way out, then scooting his chair a little closer. “You should sleep now, then they can get the nanobots out sooner-” seems reasonable, they are making his brain itch which is a sensation he’d rather have for as short a time as possible- “I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise.” He murmurs and, reassured, Jaebum snuggles down a little more comfortably into the pillows and sighs. Tentatively, Jinyoung reaches over and touches the back of his hand, taking it with a blinding smile when Jaebum turns it over and wiggles his fingers.

“If you ever take off like last year again I swear you will never have a working bank account for the rest of your life.” Jaebum mumbles, drowsiness tugging him closer to sleep. Jinyoung breathes a laugh and drops a kiss onto the back of his hand before clasping it between both of his own.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.” And finally, Jaebum thinks he’s starting to believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey it's finished!!! we did it kids!! I hope you enjoyed this fic, I truly love it and I have tentative thoughts for a sequel but if/when that'll happen I don't know; not for a while at least. That being said, thank you so much for reading and I really hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I loved writing and thinking about it <3 as always hmu down below or [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles/) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles) with your thoughts <3<3 thanks again!!!!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! leave a comment and check me out on [twitter](https://twitter.com/jbibbles) and [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jbibbles) if u like!!


End file.
